Scandinavian Egg Coffee

Scandinavian egg coffee is boiled coffee with a clever trick: before brewing, the grounds are mixed with a raw egg. As it boils, the egg cooks and binds the grounds together, so they sink in a clump, leaving the coffee clear and smooth. It’s associated with Scandinavian, especially Swedish, immigrants in the American Midwest, and became the coffee of Lutheran church basements in Minnesota, made in big pots for church suppers and gatherings. Here’s how it’s made.

The short version

• Grounds mixed with a raw egg, sometimes with the crushed shell.
• Boiled for about three minutes.
• Cold water helps the bound grounds sink.
• Pour off the clear coffee.
• A Minnesota church-basement tradition.

How does egg coffee work?

When the egg-and-coffee paste goes into boiling water, the egg cooks and traps the grounds, clumping them together. When cold water is added, the clump sinks, and the coffee above it is clear, without the grit of ordinary boiled coffee. Fans describe the result as smooth and mellow. Some blogs claim the egg proteins neutralise the coffee’s acids, but I haven’t found good evidence for that, so I’d treat it as lore.

How do you make egg coffee, step by step?

This follows a church-basement recipe published on Food.com, which uses 1 egg, 1 cup of ground coffee, 6 cups of boiling water and 1 cup of cold water, split in two:

1. Beat a raw egg, crush in the shell if you like, and mix it with the coffee grounds and about half a cup of cold water into a paste.
2. Bring a pot of water to the boil.
3. Stir in the paste and boil for about three minutes.
4. Take it off the heat and add more cold water: the grounds sink.
5. Pour off the clear coffee, through a strainer if you like.

The same recipe warns: if not boiled, the coffee is cloudy; if boiled too long, it turns bitter. Brew mode on this page times the boil for you.

How much coffee and egg?

Recipes vary with the size of the pot. The Food.com church-basement recipe uses:

	Amount
Egg	1, beaten, with its crushed shell
Ground coffee	1 cup, regular grind
Boiling water	6 cups
Cold water	1 cup: ½ cup in the paste, ½ cup to clear
Boil	3 minutes

At the Minnesota State Fair, The Takeout reports that Salem Lutheran’s brewer mashes two raw eggs, shells on, into two cups of grounds for a 40-cup urn of boiling water, then cuts the heat and waits for the “raft” of egg and grounds to settle.

Does the shell go in?

Recipes differ. Some crush the whole egg, shell and all, into the grounds; others use only the egg. Either way, it all stays behind with the grounds.

Where can you still have it?

Egg coffee has faded with time. The Takeout calls the Minnesota State Fair one of the last places it’s commercially available, at Salem Lutheran Church’s 60-seat dining hall, one of only two church halls left at the fair. Sources differ on when the hall opened: The Takeout says 1950, Heavy Table 1949, when it began as a tent over a dirt floor.

Where the habit came from is less clear than its Minnesota home. Tasting Table credits Swedish immigrants in the 1800s, but The Takeout reports that the Nordic cookbook author Patrice Johnson found no explicit cultural tie to Sweden, and that Swedes today wouldn’t recognise the drink. In 18th-century Sweden, according to the food historian Richard Tellström, fish skin was used to clear coffee in a similar way.

Scandinavian vs Vietnamese egg coffee

They share a name and nothing else. Vietnamese egg coffee, cà phê trứng, is a drink: strong coffee topped with egg yolk whipped with sugar, which you drink. Scandinavian egg coffee uses the egg only to clear the coffee; you pour the coffee off and leave the egg behind.

General guidance only. Raw egg can carry salmonella: wash your hands and surfaces after handling it, and make sure the coffee comes to a full boil.

Egg coffee vs other methods

• Swedish kokkaffe: Scandinavian boiled coffee without the egg.
• Cowboy coffee: America’s campfire coffee, settled with cold water.
• Stovetop percolator: another classic big-pot method.
• French press: steeped coffee with a filter.

Explore every boiled method in the boiled chapter.