Scandinavian Egg Coffee
Kokekaffe med eggKOH-keh-kaf-feh meh egg
A whole egg, shell included, mixed into the grounds before they hit the water. The egg protein grabs every particle and bitter tannin and carries them to the bottom, leaving coffee you can see through.
At a glance
- Coffee : water
- 1:16
- Active time
- 5 min
- Total time
- 15 min
- Makes
- 6 cups
- Serve
- Hot, black
- Kit
- Pot
Ingredients
Note: This is a completely different drink to Vietnamese egg coffee, which whips yolk into a custard foam. Here the egg is a filter and you never taste it.
Method
-
Mix the egg into the grounds
Crack the egg into a bowl, crush the shell in after it, and add the coffee grounds with a splash of cold water. Stir it into a thick dark sludge that looks genuinely unappealing.
The shell is not superstition. It is calcium carbonate, it is mildly alkaline, and it takes a little of the acidity out of the cup.
-
Drop it into boiling water
Bring the 900 ml to a rolling boil, then spoon the egg and coffee mixture in. It will float up as a raft and the water will go cloudy. Boil it for nine or ten minutes, stirring once or twice.
Boil 9 to 10 minutes -
Shock it with cold water
Take it off the heat and pour in the 120 ml of cold water. The raft breaks and sinks within about a minute, taking the grounds down with it. This step is what makes the pour clean.
Settle 1 minute -
Pour carefully off the top
Pour slowly and stop before you reach the sludge. The coffee comes out clear amber rather than opaque brown, and you can read through a cupful of it. Serve it black.
Why this works
Egg white is mostly albumin, and albumin denatures and coagulates at around 65°C. As it sets in the boiling water it forms a loose mesh through the pot, and that mesh physically traps the fine coffee particles that would otherwise stay suspended. It also binds chemically to tannins and polyphenols, which are the compounds responsible for the harsh, drying bitterness in boiled coffee. Both of those get carried to the bottom when the raft sinks.
The technique is not unique to coffee. Clarifying consommé with egg white works on exactly the same principle, and so does fining wine. Coffee just happens to be the version that ended up in church basements.
The cold water at the end is doing real work rather than cooling the pot. A sudden drop in temperature makes the coagulated protein contract and become denser than the surrounding liquid, so the raft that has been floating for ten minutes sinks within about a minute. Skip it and you will be pouring grounds into cups for the next quarter hour.
The shell is the part people assume is folklore. It is calcium carbonate, it is alkaline, and it neutralises a small amount of the coffee's acidity while adding a little calcium that helps the protein coagulate. The effect is small but it is real, and it costs nothing.
Boiling coffee for ten minutes would destroy a good single origin, which is rather the point: this method was built for cheap coffee brewed in bulk. It is standard in Norway and Sweden as kokekaffe, and Scandinavian immigrants carried it to the American Midwest, where it became the coffee of Lutheran church halls across Minnesota. If you have had startlingly mild coffee out of an enamel pot at a funeral reception in the upper Midwest, this is what it was.
Variations
- Smaller batch: halve everything but keep the whole egg. It still clears a half pot.
- With cardamom: a few crushed pods in with the grounds, common in Swedish versions.
- Cowboy coffee comparison: same boiling method without the egg, which is why cowboy coffee is gritty and this is not.
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Questions
Does it taste of egg?
Not at all. The egg is a filter, not an ingredient. It coagulates, traps the grounds and sinks, and what you pour off has no egg flavour in it. People who are told afterwards are usually surprised.
Is this the same as Vietnamese egg coffee?
No, and they could not be more different. Vietnamese cà phê trứng whips egg yolk and condensed milk into a sweet custard foam you taste in every mouthful. Here a whole egg is used to clarify the pot and is thrown away.
Why does the shell go in?
Calcium carbonate is alkaline, so it takes a little of the acidity out, and the calcium helps the protein coagulate. Wash the shell before using it.
Can I skip the cold water at the end?
You can, but the grounds stay suspended much longer and you will pour them into the cups. The cold shock makes the raft dense enough to sink in about a minute.
Does boiling for ten minutes not ruin it?
It would ruin a delicate coffee, which is why this method suits a plain medium roast. The egg removes the bitterness the boiling creates, and the result is milder than anything you would get from a filter.