Skip to main content
Drink

Vienna Coffee

Vienna Coffee is a creamy coffee beverage made with cream, egg white, milk, and ground coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and coffee 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

Make the coffee

  1. Filter the coffee, using 1 tablespoon of ground coffee for each person and 1 for the pot.

  2. Alternatively, pour boiling water over the coffee, cover tightly, and boil for 1 minute.

  3. Remove from heat and let it settle for a few minutes before serving.

Make the cream

  1. In a custard kettle, heat 1 quart of cream in boiling water.

  2. Beat the egg white until frothy and mix it with 3 tablespoons of cold milk.

  3. Once the cream is hot, remove it from the heat and stir in the egg and milk mixture.

  4. Stir for 1 minute and serve.

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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

  2. Cream + coffeetop 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
Provides richness and fat, giving the drink its body and smooth, velvety texture.
Egg white
Whipped to a froth, it adds lightness and a foamy texture to the cream.
Ground coffee
Supplies the coffee flavor and aroma that the brewed drink is built on.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the hot cream. The cream should be hot but removed from the heat before the egg and milk mixture goes in, so the egg stays smooth and frothy rather than cooking into curds.

“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.

You might also like

Brown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesEgg CoffeeEgg Coffee20 recipesCoffee MilkCoffee Milk12 recipesPostum CoffeePostum Coffee9 recipes