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Drink

Vienna Coffee

A coffee beverage made with ground coffee, cream, egg white, cold milk, and water, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Vienna Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Filter the coffee, using 1 tablespoon per person and 1 for the pot.

  2. Heat 1 quart of cream in a custard kettle with boiling water.

  3. Beat the egg white until frothy.

  4. Mix the frothy egg white with 3 tablespoons of cold milk.

Make the cream

  1. Remove the hot cream from the heat.

  2. Add the egg and milk mixture to the cream.

  3. Stir the mixture together for 1 minute.

Serve and brew

  1. Serve.

  2. Pour boiling water over the coffee.

  3. Cover and boil for 1 minute.

  4. Let it sit for a few minutes to settle before serving.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg 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

Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the drink a smooth, full mouthfeel.
Egg white
Whipped to a froth, it adds lightness and a foamy texture to the mixture.
Ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor, extracted when boiling water is poured over it.

The step that matters

Remove the hot cream from the heat before adding the egg mixture. Egg proteins set when heated. Adding the egg and milk mixture to very hot cream can scramble it, so taking the cream off the heat first keeps the drink smooth.

“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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