Egg Coffee Recipe: Hà Nội's Cloud of Custard on Hot Coffee

Every egg coffee recipe online starts with the same line: egg yolk, condensed milk, strong coffee. What most of them skip is why anybody thought that was a good idea.

It is 1946, Hà Nội. Nguyễn Văn Giảng is a bartender at the Hotel Métropole, and fresh milk is scarce. Coffee without milk is bitter. He reaches for what he has: egg yolks, sugar, sweet condensed milk. He whips them into a thick, glossy cream and floats it on the coffee. The result is something between tiramisu and custard. His family still runs Café Giảng, which is where many visitors queue up for the original.

You can read the longer story of how coffee ended up in Vietnam in Vietnamese Coffee Culture.

• Keep the bowl clean and dry. Grease or water in the bowl makes the cream sag.
• Whisk long enough. A hand whisk can take 5 minutes. An electric whisk or frother is faster and easier.
• Do not stir it in right away. Sip through the cream first, then stir the coffee at the end.
• Warm cup. The water bath is part of the tradition: it keeps coffee hot while you linger.
• Pick strong coffee. The recipe uses only 40 ml, so make it count with a dark robusta. See our brand guide.

You can brew the base with any phin. If you still need one, our phin buying guide will help. Not sure about the method? Revisit How to Make Vietnamese Coffee.

Egg-free? The texture of real egg yolk is hard to replicate. If you cannot or do not want to use eggs, whip condensed milk with a little cold whipping cream for a similar topping, and call it what it is: a different drink.

Other creative drinks. If you like egg coffee, you will probably enjoy cà phê muối, salt coffee from Huế, and cà phê cốt dừa, coconut coffee, popularised by Cộng Cà Phê in Hà Nội (founded 2007).