Ca Phe Trung
Egg yolk whipped pale with condensed milk, floated over hot black coffee.
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CC BY 2.0 · Cropped, white-balanced, graded and re-encoded to WebP by eXir.
A small glass of Vietnamese egg coffee with a whipped, pale foam top, set in a bowl of hot water
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Extraction
This brew works out at 250.0 g of coffee per litre of water, against the 49.5 to 60.5 g/L the standard allows, so it is stronger than it. The comparison is made in grams per litre and not on the ratio, because a ratio is the reciprocal of a strength and a symmetric band on one is an asymmetric band on the other. Source: Golden Cup Standard, Specialty Coffee Association.
No extraction yield is shown. It needs a measured dissolved-solids figure from the finished cup, nothing on a bag of coffee supplies one, and estimating it from the method would be inventing the single number the calculation exists to establish.
Ingredients
15 g coffee
60 ml water
17 g egg yolk
20 ml condensed milk
- 15 g coffee
- 60 ml water
- 17 g egg yolk
- 20 ml condensed milk
Glass
Vessel
77 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 120 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
4 steps · 6mGrind the 15 g coffee to a medium-fine texture for the phin.
Set the phin over the serving cup and let the 60 ml water at 95 °C drip through for 3m 20s, leaving hot black coffee in the bottom of the cup.
In a separate bowl, whisk the 17 g egg yolk and 20 ml condensed milk together for 2m, until pale, thick and roughly doubled in volume.
The yolk and condensed milk are whisked together for a full two minutes, well past the point they combine, because it is that long beating that works air into the mixture and turns it from a liquid into a foam thick enough to sit on top of the coffee rather than sink into it.
Spoon the whipped yolk over the hot coffee so it sits as a distinct layer on top, and serve at once with a spoon.
Common pitfallThe yolk is used raw and only briefly warmed by the hot coffee under it, so a fresh, well-refrigerated egg matters more here than in a cooked dish; this is not a drink to make from one that has sat out.
Keeping and make-ahead
The yolk is whipped and the coffee dripped to order; whipped yolk deflates within minutes, so there is nothing here that keeps.
About
Raw egg yolk whipped with condensed milk into a thick foam and floated over hot phin-dripped coffee, a Hanoi dish attributed to a single named cafe.
The drink's invention is credited, by family account, to Nguyen Giang, the founder of what is now Café Giảng in Hanoi's Old Quarter. His son's version of events, recorded by Wikipedia's editors rather than independently verified, holds that Giang worked out the recipe in the late 1940s, when fresh milk was scarce in Vietnam and condensed milk on its own no longer stretched far enough to make the cappuccinos and milk coffee the era's cafes served, so he beat egg yolk into it instead, for the same body and richness 1. That is a family's account of its own founder, the same category of claim the brief's own caution about cocktail lore applies to, and it is presented here as attributed rather than settled.
What is independently verifiable is that Café Giảng itself dates from 1946 and has operated continuously since, treating the recipe as something handed down through the family rather than published 2. The cafe's own account emphasises inheritance and craft over any specific claim of invention, which is a notably more modest position than the story usually told about it elsewhere.
However it began, the technique is distinctive enough to have spread well beyond the one shop credited with it: raw egg yolk is beaten at length with condensed milk until it turns pale and holds air, then spooned over hot black coffee brewed through a phin rather than mixed into it, so the two sit as separate layers, a dessert-like foam over a bitter, smoky robusta base 1. Cafes across Hanoi now serve versions of it, most still built on the same two ingredients and the same long whisk.
- 1Egg coffeeen.wikipedia.org
- 2Café Giảngcafegiang.vn