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Sandwiches (Method Beat the white)
Method. - Beat the white and crushed shell of the egg and half the cup of cold water together; mix with the coffee, pour over the boiling water, stir thoroughly, and boil from three to five minutes with the nozzle tightly closed; pour half a cup of cold water down the spout; stir in one tablespoonful of coffee and let stand on the range, without boiling, ten minutes.
Tea.
This is boiled coffee cleared with egg, the standard hotel and household method before drip and percolator equipment became universal. The ingredient list that belonged with it has been separated from the method, so the quantities of coffee and water are not recoverable from this page alone.
- Missing proportionsThe method calls for "half the cup of cold water," "the coffee" and "the boiling water" without stating amounts; the cold water appears to be one cup, used in two halves. Comparable period recipes commonly give about a tablespoon of ground coffee to a cup of water, but the original figures for this recipe are absent from the page.
- The nozzleThe vessel assumed is a coffee boiler or pot with a spout rather than a modern pot. "Nozzle tightly closed" means stopping the spout so steam and aroma do not escape during the boil, whether by a hinged cap, a cork or a twist of cloth.
- Why the eggEgg white and crushed shell coagulate in the hot liquid and trap suspended grounds and fines, dropping them to the bottom. This is the same clarification principle used for consomme, and it is the only filtration in the process.
- The hinge: the cold water at the endThe half cup poured down the spout is what settles the grounds. Skipping it leaves silt in every cup, since nothing is strained.
- Three to five minutes of boilingBoiling extracts bitter compounds and drives off aromatics, which is precisely why brewing moved away from this method. Modern practice holds water at 195-205F and never boils the brew.
- The tablespoon stirred in at the endDry grounds are added after the boil and the pot stands ten minutes off the boil; the likely intent is to restore aroma driven off during boiling, and the standing time also lets the new grounds settle.
- Ground sizeA coarser grind settles more readily; very fine grounds are harder to clear, though the egg white and shell are there specifically to carry fines to the bottom.
- ServingPour gently and stop short of the bottom inch, where the egg and grounds have collected.
Egg coffee belongs to the long era when coffee was boiled rather than filtered, and the problem to be solved was not extraction but clarity. Ground coffee simply boiled in water gives a muddy cup, so cooks borrowed the clarification trick from stock-making: beaten egg white, often with the crushed shell for extra surface, coagulates and carries the fine particles down. American cookbooks appear to have printed variations of it from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and it survived longest in institutional settings and in Scandinavian-American church kitchens of the upper Midwest, where boiled egg coffee is still made in quantity. The stray word "Tea." at the end of this page is most likely the heading of the entry that followed.