When I was a wee lad, my nanny was an Englishwoman married to a Norwegian. She prepared his coffee in an enamel saucepan which was badly stained from having had so much coffee brewed in it. Her method was to put cold water into the pan up to a dark ring which had been stained into the sides years before. Then she added coffee, half a broken egg shell and a pinch of salt to the cold water. This she put on the stove and watched it very, very carefully as it came just up to a boil -- which would lift the grounds on a foaming surface -- and remove it from the heat before it boiled over. Then it was allowed to steep for a bit, such that the grounds all settled to the bottom of the pan. She carefully racked off the coffee into large cups with about equal parts of hot milk sweetened with white sugar. As a youngster, I naturally thought everybody made it that way.
