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Drink

Boiled Coffee

A beverage made by boiling a paste of coffee, egg, and water, then adding sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Mix the ground coffee, Mocha, Java, egg, and cold water in a bowl to form a smooth paste.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-scaled coffeepot.

  3. Add 1 quart of boiling water to the coffeepot.

  4. Boil briskly for 15 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and let it settle for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Pour into coffee cups, adding loaf sugar and rich sweet cream to taste.

  2. Serve immediately for best flavor.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Helps clarify the brew, binding fine grounds so they settle out of the liquid.
Ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma once steeped in hot water.
Mocha coffee
Adds coffee flavor and body to the blend.
Java coffee
Adds coffee flavor and body to the blend.

The step that matters

Let it settle after boiling. Boiling briskly extracts bitterness and keeps grounds suspended. Removing from heat and letting the grounds settle lets the egg and grounds clear the liquid before pouring, so the cup stays clean and less bitter.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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