Vietnamese Egg Coffee (Cà Phê Trứng)

Vietnamese egg coffee, cà phê trứng, is strong coffee crowned with a thick, sweet cream of egg yolks whipped with sweetened condensed milk and sugar. It’s a speciality of Hanoi, where it was invented in 1946 as a way round a shortage of milk, and it sits somewhere between a drink and a dessert: “Should I eat or drink?” one visitor asked VietNamNet’s writer. Here’s how to make it at home, how to make it safer, and the family story behind it.

The short version

• Strong coffee from a Vietnamese phin, under a whipped egg-yolk cream.
• Egg yolks, condensed milk and sugar, whipped for about 5 minutes.
• Invented in 1946 by Nguyen Van Giang, a bartender at Hanoi’s Metropole hotel.
• Café Giảng, the family café, still serves it in Hanoi.
• Tastes like tiramisu, says chef Nini Nguyen, not like egg.

What’s in Vietnamese egg coffee?

Two recipes, both for one drink, show how much the sweetness can vary:

	Imbibe (chef Nini Nguyen)	VICE
Coffee	4 oz strong coffee or espresso; she suggests Café du Monde, through a phin	4 oz strong coffee, ideally from a phin
Egg yolks	2 large	2 large
Sweetened condensed milk	3 tbsp	¼ cup (80 g)
Sugar	1 tsp	1 tsp
Extra	¼ tsp vanilla; cocoa to dust	None
Whip	5 minutes, until frothy	About 5 minutes, until thick and frothy

The original is richer still. According to Mental Floss, Café Giảng lists its ingredients as chicken egg yolk, Vietnamese coffee powder, sweetened condensed milk, butter and even cheese; VietNamNet adds that Giang’s recipe included “some secret ingredients” passed down to his children.

How do you make egg coffee at home?

1. Brew strong coffee. A phin is traditional: Imbibe’s note uses 2 tbsp of ground coffee and 5 oz of boiling water, dripped into the cup. VICE says a French press or espresso machine will do.
2. Whip the cream. Beat the yolks, condensed milk and sugar for about 5 minutes with a whisk or electric mixer.
3. Test it. Imbibe’s tip: drop a little onto water. If it floats, it’s ready.
4. Assemble. Pour the cream gently over the hot coffee. VICE pours half the coffee into the glass, adds the cream, then pours the rest of the coffee over so it soaks through.
5. Keep it hot. VICE stands the glass in a bowl of just-boiled water for 3 minutes to help cook the egg; VietNamNet saw Hanoi cafés serve it in a bowl of hot water to keep it warm.

The egg in egg coffee is barely cooked. In the UK, the Food Standards Agency’s advice, reported by IFST, is that even infants, children, pregnant women and elderly people can safely eat raw or lightly cooked hen eggs produced under the British Lion Code of Practice; non-Lion, non-hen and imported eggs should be cooked thoroughly for those groups, and the advice doesn’t cover people who are severely immunocompromised.

General guidance only, not food-safety or medical advice. Check the egg advice where you live.

Where does egg coffee come from?

Hanoi, 1946. During the First Indochina War, Mental Floss explains, milk was hard to come by, so Nguyen Van Giang, a bartender at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel, developed a coffee using whisked egg instead of dairy. The sources agree on the man and the year, but tell the rest slightly differently:

Question	Mental Floss	VietNamNet
Why egg	Milk was scarce in the First Indochina War	Fresh milk was often short in the 1940s
The café	Its success led him to leave the hotel and open Café Giảng	He left the hotel and created Café Giảng in 1946
Who runs it now	His son, Tri Hoa	His youngest son, Nguyen Tri Hoa

Mental Floss adds that the recipe evolved to make the egg taste more subtle, that blenders made the whisking easier, and that by the 1980s the drink was more popular than ever. VietNamNet says Café Giảng sits in a small alley at 39 Nguyen Huu Huan Street, opened a franchise in Yokohama in 2018, and now also serves egg coffee with rum, chocolate, cinnamon or green tea. Giang’s daughter Bich opened Café Đinh at 13 Dinh Tien Hoang Street, overlooking Hoan Kiem Lake.

Egg coffee vs other sweet coffees

• Vietnamese iced coffee: phin coffee with condensed milk over ice.
• Einspänner: Vienna’s coffee under a cap of whipped cream.
• Café cubano: coffee whipped with sugar into a sweet foam.
• Affogato: espresso poured over vanilla ice cream.

Explore every drink in the sweet and spiced chapter.