Did You Know?~ Egg Coffee

This is an interesting recipe for a coffee lover like me. Reading it I had visions of egg-drop-soup-like threads of egg floating in my morning coffee. But not so. 

You may find the recipe hard to read; I did. (This is from The Housekeeper’s Encyclopedia by Mrs. E.F. Haskell.)

Allow one heaping tablespoonful of ground coffee for each person, and one for the boiler. If eggs are plenty take half enough to wet the grounds; if not, add sufficient cold water to mix thoroughly; beat the coffee and egg until it shows foam; egg if used too freely congeals the coffee and retains the strength. Scald the boiler, and shake out all the water; pour on sufficient boiling water to serve the first table, allowing a cup for evaporation and waste; as soon as it boils, stir down the grounds that rise until all inclination to boil over has ceased; after this boil five minutes hard, with the pot closed; then take it from the fire, and drop a half teaspoonful of cold water, and no more, in the pot; let it stand where it remains hot, but not boiling, from three to five minutes.

I did some research to find out why, exactly, people would put egg in coffee. Turns out this is a traditional Scandinavian way to prepare coffee.

Here is the supposed science behind the recipe. The egg beaten with the coffee grounds encourages the grounds to sink to the bottom of the pot. In addition, the protein in the egg binds to the bitter polyphenols in the coffee which fall to the bottom of the pot. As a result the coffee will be clearer with a mild taste.

In case anyone would like to try this, here is a recipe that’s easier to follow than the one above.

Ingredients

9 cups water (to boil) plus 1 1/4 cold water

3/4 cup freshly ground coffee (medium to coarse grind)

1 egg

Preparation

1) In a saucepan or enamel coffee pot, bring 9 cups of water to a rapid boil.

2) Stir together ground coffee, 1/4 cup water, and 1 egg.

3) When the water is boiling, pour in the egg/coffee mixture. You may notice a lump of coffee grounds rise to the surface. This is supposed to be okay.   

4) Continue to boil for 3 minutes, then remove the pot from the heat and add 1 cup of cold water. Let the coffee settle for 10 minutes and the lump of grounds will settle to the bottom of the pot.

5) Pour through a fine sieve into cups. (Or if you’re hardcore, just pour the coffee from the pot and chew the grounds.)

Makes 10 cups coffee.

If anyone does make this, or if you've had this kind of coffee, I'd love to hear from you!

Read More

Did You Know! ~ Melitta Bentz

In this day of automatic everything, it’s easy to take housekeeping conveniences for granted. Refrigerators, ovens, vacuum cleaners, to name a few. And then there’s the ultimate. . .the coffee maker.

Yes, I love coffee. A morning without my cup of coffee is like the proverbial day without sunshine. I suppose we could discuss the possibility that I have an addiction to the stuff, but if I do, I’m not the only one. Even on television, people drink a lot of coffee. As I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I watch westerns on a daily basis, and no matter whether it’s Bonanza or Gunsmoke, someone is always offering someone else coffee.

Back then when you drank coffee, you were probably going to get grounds in your teeth. It was made by boiling water, then adding ground coffee and letting it sit for a while. Chester Goode on Gunsmoke had his own technique. He said, “Worst thing [people] do, they throw away the old grounds after using them once. . .You got to keep them old grounds, and you add a little fresh coffee every morning and let her boil.” Yikes! No wonder Doc cringed when he drank it.

Anyway, I wondered how coffee evolved in real life to the beverage we drink today. What I found out is that coffee drinking has a very, very long history, beginning with the Yemens. It’s so long, I don’t have room here to cover here.

But I did discover Melitta Bentz. (Does the name Melitta sound familiar?) This German housewife invented the first disposable paper coffee filter in 1908. Yay, her! Before her invention, she used the method of wrapping loose coffee grounds in a cloth and boiling the cloth in water, but she didn’t like the bitter taste and the sediment left behind. Melitta decided to filter her coffee using a piece of her son’s blotting paper in a brass pot perforated using a nail. Brilliant!

Melitta received a patent for her brewing design in 1908. On December 15th, 1908, Melitta Bentz and her husband Hugo started the Melitta Bentz Company. The next year they sold 1200 coffee filters at the Leipziger fair in Germany.

And thus a thriving business was born (along with lots of happy coffee drinkers). The Melitta Bentz Company also patented the filter bag in 1937 and vacuum packing in 1962. The Melitta company continues to thrive today.

And so I’m lifting a cup of coffee in memory of Melitta Bentz. Dankeschön. I am grateful.

Read More

Write Right~Would You Like Some Miasma with Your Coffee?

My Keurig®

Last year I got myself a Keurig® coffee maker for my birthday. Hands down, one of my best purchases ever! I bought one of the larger ones with a good sized water tank that holds enough water for at least five cups of coffee.  

In preparation for that first (awesome, amazing, wonderful) morning cup of coffee, I fill Keurig®’s tank the evening before so that all I have to do is put one of the little K-Cups in the Keurig® when I wake up and push the button. Then, about a minute later, I have a cup of coffee. 

Yes, the days of grinding my own beans and using the drip coffee maker are over. I will admit that freshly ground is better, but there’s not a big enough difference to make me give up the convenience of my Keurig®

So what does this have to do with The Borrowed Book? No, I’m not trying to convince everyone to buy a Keurig®. I was reading The Young Housewife’s Counsellor and Friend from 1871 looking for something of interest to share with our bloggers, and I found this little tidbit that made me think:

Water that has been standing in the house is not fit to be used for coffee or tea. Unwholesome gases are apt to be imbibed from the air in which persons have been breathing for even an hour. Standing water is unwholesome to drink; it should be often replaced with fresh.

To make sense of this excerpt, I have to explain that what people called miasmas (noxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; poisonous effluvia or germs polluting the atmosphere) were thought to be the cause of disease in the 1800s. I don't have space to address miasmas further in this article. I hope to do so in the future.

But in the meantime, I'm making a sign for the kitchen:  

Read More