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Drink

Vienna Coffee

A coffee beverage made with beaten egg white, whipped cream, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,339 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Vienna Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the topping

  1. Beat the egg white to a stiff froth.

  2. Mix the frothy egg white with the whipped cream.

Assemble

  1. Pour cream into a cup, then add coffee, and top with the egg white and cream mixture.

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. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + coffeetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,239 recipes

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

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 white
Whipped into a foam, it traps air and gives the topping its light, airy structure.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture to the frothy topping.
Coffee
Forms the bitter, aromatic base of the drink.
Cream
Adds fat for richness, mellowing the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white to a stiff froth. Air trapped in the egg white proteins forms a foam that holds its shape on top of the coffee. Under-beaten white runs into the drink, while over-beaten white turns dry and grainy.

“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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