How A Milk Shortage Led To The Creation Of Vietnamese Egg Coffee

In the pantheon of great coffees, cà phê, Vietnam's signature drink stands tall alongside Italian espresso and traditional Turkish coffee as one of the very best the world has to offer. It's deep, complex, bitter, and richly sweet all at once. And among all the varieties of coffee found in Vietnam, perhaps the most famous is cà phê trúng, also known as egg coffee.

If you've been lucky enough to try this drink in the city in which it was invented, Hanoi, you'll have just felt a wash of nostalgia — and you're probably getting thirsty. It takes the finest notes of cà phê and turns them up to 11: it's richer, sweeter, and creamier. A mix of whipped egg, sugar, butter, and coffee that is as much a luxurious dessert as it is a morning pick-me-up. But this lavish drink has much humbler roots than you might think. 

Coffee was introduced to Vietnam in the 19th Century by the French, who occupied the country for decades before being forced out during the First Indochina War in 1946. It was in that year that Nguyen van Giang, a bartender at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel, first used whipped eggs and sugar as a substitute for milk, which was in short supply due to the war. His drink became an instant sensation, and Giang went on to open his own café in Hanoi — where his son, having taken over the family business, is still making coffee to this day.

Vietnamese coffee is strong — really strong. It's similar to espresso, but you get slightly more of it per serving, so it's important to balance out any potential bitterness. Luckily, the Vietnamese had the ingenious idea to mix their coffees not with regular cow's milk, but rather with sticky, sweet condensed milk. This heavenly liquid is as much of a cornerstone of Viet cuisine as cilantro or fish sauce. When mixed with Vietnamese coffee, it takes an already delicious drink to stratospheric heights. It's decadent, yet in the blistering heat of Vietnam, it somehow proves itself refreshing. Its sweetness is the perfect counterbalance to the coffee's earthy, dark chocolatey bitterness, and tempers its potentially sour top notes, too.

When eggs are introduced, they somehow make all these qualities even more pronounced. They bring a thick creamy texture and unctuous, almost an umami quality to the drink. While the original egg coffee was made with a simple mixture of eggs and sugar — Giang couldn't have used milk even if he wanted to, thanks to the war — beaten together not unlike an Italian zabaglione (though that particular concoction is often also made with marsala wine). The modern version is often made with condensed milk added to the mixture, the interplay of the subtly savory egg and the deep sweetness of the condensed milk creates a beautifully rounded flavor profile that takes a simple coffee and elevates it to be something really quite special.

If you find yourself, like Giang did, wanting a coffee but lacking any milk, you could always bring a taste of Vietnam's funky café culture to your own kitchen and try to make an egg coffee at home. You'll need (to recreate it in its most basic form), eggs and sugar. Separate the yolk and beat it vigorously with the sugar for longer than you think you'll need to (about 10 minutes or so), until it's pale and fluffy, and the sugar is well incorporated. You're looking for it to get to the point where there are no longer any granules of sugar (a bit like if you were making a meringue).

If you have some condensed milk, you could recreate the modern version by using the same technique but adding it alongside the sugar. This makes an even creamier, slightly more complex flavor thanks to condensed milk's malty, biscuity, almost ... well ... milky flavor. The whole thing will be brightened by the air whipped into the mixture as you beat it, which means that this drink is closer to a dessert than your regular latte or cappuccino. It's surprisingly easy to drink one ... and then another.