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My ancestors emigrated in the 1880's to the Chicago area. Like many other Swedish-American families I know, we make "egg coffee." I have always understood this to be a custom brought over from Sweden. When I toured Scandinavia this month, I couldn't find a single modern-day Swede who knew about "egg coffee." I got a lot of strange looks when I asked about it. Does anyone know if this drink really originated in Sweden? The recipe is simple. Beat an egg and mix it with coffee grounds. Pour the resulting slurry into a pot of boiling water. Let the mixture boil to the top of the pot and then turn off the heat. Let it steep for several minutes. Strain into coffee cups. I can attest that it makes a good cup of coffee--if a bit weak. Nancy Wiberg Jones | ||
Never heard about it. Maybe someone else knows. | ||
This is a pure Swedish-American thing! It is not something that we drink here, but most Swedish American know about it, and have tasted it as kids, according to my US friends. It was the custom in the later 1800s to add a piece of fish skin to the water, when you were making coffee, it was called "klarskinn" and was supposed to make the coffee clear and not look full of grounds. I think the emigrants used the "tissue" that you find inside an egg for the same purpose, as they could not easily get the little pieces of fish skin in the US. And then perhaps someone dropped the egg into the coffe and liked it.... | ||
I've read that when you add milk or cream to coffee, a protein (casein) in the milk reduces the bitterness of the coffee. Perhaps the egg-white proteins have the same effect. Coffe was probably more bitter back then than it is nowadays, so it might have been needed. And a hen is certainly more affordable than a cow.  Now, what if some clever guy working on an emigrant ship had discovered this use for eggs, so he kept hens in a coop on board and sold the eggs for use in coffee...? | ||
Thank you all for your responses. I especially like Ann-Carin's theory about the clever guy with the hen coop. I still find it curious that this way of making coffee has such wide usage only among Swedish-Americans. People from many different provinces of origin and from many different Swedish settlements across the US carry on the tradition. Oh well, perhaps we should sell the recipe to Starbucks? | ||
Tord and Eivor Wallström have written a book, Potato sausage and pioneers, people and their food in the Swedish-American Midwest (Potatiskorv och pionjärer...), printed 1988. Page 112: "In Comstock (North Dakota)we were served "egg-coffee", something we had never tasted, nor even heard of before. But Ruth Andersson and the other ladies were certain that it is an old Swedish way of preparing coffee. Egg is mixed with coarselyground coffee, boiled water is poured over, and it is allowed to boil and then stand about 10 minutes before serving. The egg-coffee is perfectly clear and the taste is excellent. It is very common among Swedish-Americans - but in Sweden it is completely forgotten...if it ever was a Swedish custom. Not even the Department of Ethnology at Lund University, where they specialize in old Swedish eating and drinking habits, knew about it!" Nils Hård af segerstad | ||
Just an interesting side-bar: I was watching Alfred Hitchcock's SPELLBOUND (1945) last week. To my surprise Ingrid Bergman's character turns to her mentor and says, "Would you like me to make you some egg-coffee?" Of course, that doesn't prove anything except that a famous Swede must have know what egg-coffee was in 1945. Nancy Jones | ||
Hi again Nancy, Well, you could be right ofcourse, but it could also mean that somebody from the Swedish-American community was involved in the making of the film and advised Alfred Hitchcock to include it in the script. Hope you are well! Kind regards, Ann (in England) | ||
Hi, My grandmother was from gamleby, sweden and she made swedish egg coffee as dad did also. When I asked why he put egg in the coffee grounds he said that it was to hold the coffee grounds together. He put the coffee grounds in a bowl, added an egg, a pinch of salt, ( to take the bitterness out ) and just enough water to make it pourable. He then added it to boiling water, let it boil for about ten minutes then shut it off and let it settle. The coffee ground settled to the bottom of the pot. I remember drinking the coffee which was rather sweet and he added cream and sugar to it as I was very young to be drinking coffee. He did use american coffee not swedish. I believe it was eight o'clock coffee that they got at the A&P grocery store. We lived in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan at the time. | ||
Hi Glenna, It seems like a smart method! Though drinking a lot of coffee during the years and also been living in Gamleby, I have not heard of it before. An explanation could be that I was only a couple of years old and nobody discussed the matter with me!  After having consulted our oldest cookbook “Prinsessornas kokbok” part IV, issued 1932, item “1014 Kokning av kaffe” I know a little more. The method using “klarskinn” (i.e. clear-skin made of dry fish-skin) is first mentioned in the book and then you are learned to use egg white to make it even clearer. The dry coffee mixed with the raw egg white has to be put in the cold water and the coffee then filtered before drinking. That’s all and the extra filtering of the coffee makes it less interesting. Normally the grain settles in the bottom of the pan after some minutes and the emulsified egg /grain should behave the same. Looking forward to seeing the outcome of your experiments, Yours Hasse S | ||
Hej, my Kajsas Kokbok from 1935 also says that the coffee could be mixed with raw egg white, then poured into cold water, and after boiling it all, you would have a very clear coffee. Nothing said about filtering afterwards. My theory is that this was never a widely spread habit in Sweden. To use an egg white like this, and throw it away without eating it, is really a waste of God's gifts. In many homes the coffee was not wasted after boiling it either - it was "recycled" as long as possible, it was rather a matter of getting coffee at all then worrying about the taste and clearity of it. (My great great grandfather even recycled his chewing tobacco; he dried it after use on the stove, and then he smoked it in a pipe). Well - even if it was not a widely spread habit, it was known, and so was the ideal of clear coffee. And when svenska kvinnor became american women, they could afford to make a little more out of things than they could ever do at home. So they could do egg coffee, and sweet cakes, and put butter on top of wheat bread with cinnamon. The ideal of clear coffee went to, and preserved by, such exaggerations as the coffee I was served this summer in a church hall in Minnesota. A coffee so clear, that it was just a little whiff of coffee beans from pure water. But it was given to me with warm heart, and I loved it. | ||
Let us hope they used the yolks in the cakes they baked! Hasse S | ||
Some information out of subject: The Swedish princesses on the book cover were Princess Margaretha, later queen of Denmark, Princess Märta, later queen of Norway, Princess Astrid, later crown princess of Belgium, unfortunately she died in a car crash. | ||
Monica, Princess Margaretha married Prince Axel of Denmark, but never became queen. It was her cousin Ingrid of Sweden who married Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and later became queen of Denmark. | ||
It was very interesting to read about these old ways to make the coffee clear. I have heard about fish skin, but never the method with egg. Ann-Mari Bäckman | ||
Elisabeth, thank you for correcting my mistake. Of course it was Ingrid that became queen of Denmark. It was my cookery book from 1932 that my husband had scanned, and inside it the ladies were titulated, Princess, Crownprinsess and Crownprincess. Monica S | ||
Hi, The discussion on Swedish egg coffee is interesting. All of my ancestors came from Sweden, from various parts of the country, from the 1870's through the 1990's. Mother says her people would use the egg whites only to mix with the coffee gounds, moisten it with water, and add it to the boiling water. Continue to cook for about 5 minutes and remove from the fire for a few minutes. A small amount of cold water added to the hot coffee would aid the settling of the grounds. This method produced clear, delicious coffee. I think it is entirely possible that this method started in Sweden. Many of the cultural habits and foods are already forgotten in Sweden today. I remember when I was a girl that a Swede came to America- Leonard Sederdahl I believe was his name-in the 60's or so and toured most of the major Swedish American settlements in order to collect data on immigration. He came to our area of Kansas-around the Lindsborg settlement. He made the comment that it was advantageous for the Swedes to visit America because we have preserved many Swedish ways from the 1800's that they have forgotten already. The Swedish immigrants clung to the old ways as a way of sticking together and preserving their heritage. I agree with Britt that most American coffee is much weaker than the Swedish counterpart. Perhaps this had to do with the hard times of the immigrants, making it necessary to conserve the coffee. All this talk of coffee makes me thirsty. I agree with the old saying that "coffee is the best of all earthly drinks!" | ||
Hello! I have a strong memory from my childhood during the 60ies of my grandmother (b1894-d1992), a farmers wife (with hens) and local cook, when she boiled coffee in a big coffee-pot using egg-whites to clear the coffee as a finishing procedure. She also used egg-whites to clear bouillon/stock. Logical use of eggs, as I see it - a kind of flocculoreaction followed by sedimentation.... | ||
It was interesting to read about "egg coffee." Where I was at some 70 years ago in the state of Idaho between Spokane, Washington & Missoula, Montana we just put the shell in the coffee and fried the egg. I was among a settlement of Finlanders. There was only one Swede. Our town drunk, Ole Olson from Lapland. | ||
My father, b. in Minnesota in 1900, son of a Swedish emigrant, said he started drinking coffee at the age of four. I have always wondered how and when Swedes and other Scandinavians came to drink so much coffee when it was not a locally-grown product. Does anyone know when it was introduced to the area and by whom? Was this another Viking import? Incidentally, when I was growing up in Minnesota and for many years afterward,especially in Scandinavian-German background communities, egg coffee was often prepared in big white granite coffee pots in church kitchens, some with the shells and some with just the egg, especially when large quantities of coffee were needed for church suppers. However, after automatic coffee pots became common, people didn't use that method any more. I was interested to learn that the egg was a replacement for the fish skin. | ||
The Turks taught the Europeans to drink coffee in the 17th century (the Turks had learned it from the Arabs). In was first introduced in Venice, and the first record of it there is from 1645, when it was sold in the pharmacies as medicine. Soon afterwards it reached France and England, and next Central Europe. One of the Swedish king Carl XII's war campaigns landed him as a captive in Turkey in 1713; there he and his men learned to enjoy coffee, and afterwards brought it to Sweden. Tea was introduced in Sweden about the same time but didn't catch on with the general public as it was very expensive; in the 2nd half of the 18th century it was fashionable among the upper classes. (Source: "Historiebok för kakälskare" by Dick Harrison and Eva Helen Ulvros) |
