Recipe
Cà phê trứng
Vietnamese egg coffee
Roughly: ka fe TRUNG
A wartime milk shortage, a hotel bartender and four egg yolks. The result tastes like liquid tiramisu and has outlived every explanation of how it came about.
What you need
Equipment
- A phin, 120 ml
- A small heatproof glass or cup
- A shallow bowl the glass fits inside
- An electric hand whisk — a balloon whisk works but takes real effort
- A small mixing bowl
Ingredients
- Egg yolks, fresh, at room temperature2
Room temperature whips far better than fridge-cold.
- Sweetened condensed milk30 ml2 tbsp
- Dark-roast Vietnamese robusta, medium-coarse18 gabout 3 tbsp
- Water, just off the boil90 mlabout 6 tbsp
- Vanilla extract, optionala drop
- Boiling water for the bain-marieenough to come halfway up the glass
Method
- 1
Brew the coffee first
Load the phin with 18 g, bloom with 20 ml, then add the remaining 70 ml. Let it drip into the small glass. You want it hot when the foam goes on.
Look for: About 65–70 ml of very dark coffee.
- 2
Separate the yolks carefully
Any white that gets in will stop the foam setting properly. Two yolks is right for one drink — this is a rich cup.
Look for: Clean yolks with no stringy white attached.
- 3
Whisk the yolks and condensed milk
Whisk on high for four to six minutes. It will go from loose and orange to pale, thick and glossy. This is the step people cut short, and it is the reason most home attempts fail.
Look for: Pale custard yellow, holds a soft peak, roughly tripled in volume.
- 4
Check the texture
Lift the whisk. The foam should fold back on itself slowly and hold its shape for a few seconds. If it collapses immediately, keep whisking.
Look for: A ribbon that sits on the surface before sinking.
- 5
Spoon it on
Spoon — do not pour — the foam onto the hot coffee. It should sit on top as a distinct layer roughly as deep as the coffee below it.
Look for: Two clear layers, dark below, pale gold above.
- 6
Stand it in hot water
Set the glass in a shallow bowl of boiling water. This is how it is served in Hanoi and it is not decoration — the drink cools fast and the foam firms up unpleasantly when it does.
Look for: Steam rising around the glass.
If it goes wrong
| What happened | Why | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| The foam is thin and never thickened. | Under-whisked, cold yolks, or white got into the yolks. | Whisk longer than feels reasonable — five minutes with an electric whisk. Start with room-temperature eggs. |
| It tastes eggy. | Under-whisked, or stale eggs. | Proper whipping denatures the yolk proteins and the eggy note goes. Fresh eggs matter. A drop of vanilla helps mask any remainder. |
| The foam sank into the coffee. | Foam too loose, or poured rather than spooned. | Whisk to a soft peak and spoon it gently onto the surface. |
| It has gone grainy. | Over-whisked, or the coffee was boiling hot and started to cook the yolk. | Let the coffee sit 30 seconds before adding the foam. Stop whisking once it holds a peak. |
The short version
Whisk two room-temperature egg yolks with two tablespoons of condensed milk for five minutes until pale and thick. Brew 18 g of coffee in a phin into a small glass. Spoon the foam on top. Stand the glass in a bowl of hot water and drink it before it cools.
Why egg, of all things
The standard account is that in the mid-1940s, fresh milk was scarce in Hanoi, and a bartender at what is now the Metropole hotel substituted whipped egg yolk. The family café that carries his name still serves it.
Whether or not every detail of that story survives scrutiny, the underlying logic is sound and matches what happened with condensed milk: Vietnamese coffee culture repeatedly solved a dairy problem with whatever was actually available, and the substitute turned out to be good enough to keep.
The technique that actually matters
Everything rests on the whisking. Under-whipped yolk tastes of egg and sinks into the coffee. Properly whipped yolk — pale, glossy, tripled in volume — tastes of custard and floats.
Five minutes with an electric whisk. It will look ready at two minutes. It is not.
How it is served in Hanoi
In a small glass, in a bowl of hot water, with a spoon. You eat the first third with the spoon and drink the rest. Cafés in the Old Quarter serve dozens of variants now — cocoa, matcha, beer — but the original is the one worth learning.
Substitutions
| Instead of | Use | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Raw egg yolk | Pasteurised egg yolk | Whips slightly less well but is the sensible choice if raw egg is a concern. Available in cartons in most supermarkets. |
| Egg | Aquafaba plus condensed milk | Makes a vegan foam with a similar texture, though without the custard richness. Whip 45 ml of aquafaba to stiff peaks first, then fold in the milk. |
Questions people ask
- Does egg coffee taste like egg?
- Properly made, no. Whipping the yolk with condensed milk until it is pale and thick removes the eggy note almost entirely — what is left tastes like warm custard or the cream layer of a tiramisu.
- Is egg coffee safe to drink?
- It uses raw or barely-warmed egg yolk, so the usual raw-egg guidance applies: use fresh eggs, and choose pasteurised yolks if you are pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised.
- Who invented egg coffee?
- It is widely attributed to Nguyễn Văn Giảng, a bartender at the Sofitel Legend Metropole in Hanoi, who is said to have used whipped egg yolk in place of scarce fresh milk in the mid-1940s. Café Giảng in Hanoi is still run by his family. The account is well established but rests largely on family and press accounts rather than contemporary documentation.
- Should egg coffee be hot or cold?
- Hot is the original and still the norm in Hanoi. Iced versions exist and are common in tourist areas, but the foam behaves quite differently when cold.
Sources
Figures on this page come from the following. Where a claim is an estimate or a common description rather than a measurement, the text says so.
- Café Giảng — historyCafé Giảng (Hanoi) · accessed 2026-09-11The café's own account of Nguyễn Văn Giảng and the origin of cà phê trứng.
