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Drink

Egg Coffee

Egg coffee is a beverage made by whisking egg yolk with sugar, coffee, water, cream, and folded egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Egg Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the egg yolk with the sugar.

  2. Add the cold coffee and cold water.

  3. Stir in the desired amount of cream.

Finish

  1. Beat the egg white to a stiff froth and fold it into the 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 yolk
Adds richness and body, and helps the drink turn creamy when beaten with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps the yolk beat to a smoother, thicker base.
Cold coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and sets the drink's strength.
Egg white
Whipped to a foam, it adds a light, airy texture to the drink.
Cream
Adds fat for a softer, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg white. Whipped egg white traps air in a fragile foam. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the mixture so the drink stays light and frothy instead of deflating.

“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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