Skip to main content
Drink

Egg Coffee

A beverage made by whisking an egg with cream or milk and coffee, sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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

  1. Beat the egg in a large coffee cup.

  2. Add the cream or hot milk.

  3. Pour the cup full of hot coffee.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

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 + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Coffee + sugartop 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
Beaten egg adds richness and body, giving the coffee a creamy, smooth texture.
Cream or hot milk
Adds fat and moisture, softening the coffee's bitterness and rounding out its flavour.
Hot coffee
Provides the main liquid and the bold, bitter coffee flavour that the other ingredients soften.

The step that matters

Pour the coffee over the beaten egg and cream. Raw egg must be beaten smooth before the hot coffee is added so it blends evenly. Pouring the hot liquid onto the egg while stirring it gently helps the mixture stay smooth rather than lumpy.

“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 recipesCoffee MilkCoffee Milk12 recipesPostum CoffeePostum Coffee9 recipesBreakfast CoffeeBreakfast Coffee9 recipes