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Boiled Coffee
With a fork slightly beat the white of an egg and stir into it one cupful of cold water. Mix this with one cupful it one cupful of cold water. Mix this with one cupful of ground coffee and put it in the coffee pot. Pour over it three pints of freshly boiled water; plug up the spout; bring quickly to the boil and boil three minutes. Throw in one-quarter of a cup of cold water and set the pot at the side of the stove for five minutes. Pour out half of a cup to clear the spout and return it to the pot. Let stand a moment longer , then serve.
A standard turn-of-the-century boiled coffee, clarified with egg white. The proportions are strong by modern drip standards and the method rewards attention at two points: the grind and the settling.
- Grind coarseThe recipe does not specify a grind, but a coarse one suits boiling: fine grounds are more likely to slip past the egg raft into the cup, and hard boiling can draw out bitterness.
- The egg is the filterThe beaten white coagulates as the pot heats and traps the grounds, dragging them down when the cold water is thrown in. Use the shell too, crushed, if you have it. Without the egg this method gives a muddy cup.
- Strength and yieldThree pints is six cups, so this serves six generously or four at breakfast strength. One cup of grounds to three pints works out near the conventional two tablespoons per six-ounce cup, so the strength is not far from current practice; reduce the coffee if you prefer it lighter.
- Plugging the spoutA twist of clean cloth or a folded paper wad in the spout keeps the aroma in and stops the boil from spitting out the side. Leave the lid on but not clamped.
- Three minutes means threeBoiling coffee extracts bitter compounds fast. Time it from the moment it actually rolls, not from when the pot goes on, and pull it at three minutes.
- The cold-water dashThe quarter cup of cold water is a settling trick, not a dilution. It drops the temperature enough to sink the grounds and egg raft. Five minutes off direct heat, undisturbed, is what clears the pot.
- Freshly boiled waterThe instruction is deliberate: water already at a boil brings the pot back up quickly and shortens the time the grounds sit in warm water going stale.
- On the raw eggThe white is boiled for three minutes in the pot, so there is no undercooked egg in the finished coffee.
Boiled coffee was common in America from the early nineteenth century, though other methods were used as well, and it gave way only gradually to percolators and drip pots; the egg-white clarification appears in cookbook after cookbook of the period because the alternative was silt in the bottom of every cup. Paper filters were not yet a household item, and metal strainers fine enough to catch coffee grounds clogged quickly, so cooks relied on the fact that egg protein coagulates around suspended particles and carries them down. Camp and chuckwagon coffee kept the method alive long after town kitchens gave it up, sometimes with the egg and sometimes with nothing but a dash of cold water.