After reviewing the humorous book by John Louis Anderson (see “Getting reaquainted: John Louis Anderson” Jan 25 blog)
I kept thinking about that new Scandinavian goddess of egg coffee…Varshogoo…which is what it sounds like when Norwegians ask you to sit down and come in and enjoy yourself…varshogoo…..”be so good”.
Well, the more I thought about the taste of egg coffee the more I wanted to taste it again, but I lacked the enamel coffee pot that seems so necessary to the making of egg coffee. I once tried making it by putting the egg and coffee mixture into my coffee maker basket and it was a huge mess and a total disaster. I do not ever want to have to clean up that mess again! I ended up using one of my cooking pots but I am determined to find an enamel coffee pot—without a basket in it.
So I googled “making egg coffee”…as if I did not know how to do it already. I had watched Juanita Hanson, of my parents’ generation, make the egg coffee for “church doings” for many years. In fact, “Nita” was always called upon to make egg coffee for ANY doing…study club meetings, PTA, circle gatherings, funerals, weddings….ANYTHING that needed that good egg coffee. There were huge white enamel pots of boiling water involved, bowls of coffee and whole egg mixed together… dumping the mix into the boiling water and a waiting period for it “to settle”. Oh it tasted so good…always!!
I did learn a new thing when I looked it up and got a hit “making coffee the Norwegian way”. You not only mix raw egg with dry coffee….you also crush the egg shells and plop them into the coffee pot too so they boil along with the coffee/egg mixture. This causes the coffee to become “clear” and says you don’t even have to worry about getting clots of coffee and egg coming out of the pot after the “settling periods”.
They are right! The egg shells did wonders! It was so delicious I feel like going and making another batch right now and putting it into my white coffee thermos/pourer. Mmmmmmmmmm!!!!
You are supposed to wash the eggs well before cracking them open…no left-over chicken nest “detritus” is wanted or needed! I did everything the way the recipe said and now I do not know if I can return to coffee maker coffee.
Thinking of “Nita” and her egg coffee made me remember her oldest daughter’s wedding so long ago…early 1950′s when that family broke all the traditions and served a MEAL after the wedding. It was still held in the old “church parlors” (ie. church basement) But they had a lot more than cake and coffee and tiny fancy sandwiches and pillow mints and salted nuts…they had a real MEAL. I was among the teenage waitresses ( we were not yet called “servers”) at the wedding meal and reception. We all were given little Norwegian caps and vests, a’la bunad styles and little dainty white organdy aprons. I was a 9th grader and in my worst awkward stage. I committed the great faux pas of accidentally pouring some of that good “Nita” egg coffee down a starnger’s overcoat sleeve which was draped over the chair. I got his cup filled but also filled his coat sleeve unbeknownst to him. I did not say a word about it either—-I wonder what he thought when he went home and put his arm down that egg-coffee soaked sleeve.
I was so humiliated I fled to the church kitchen to compose myself before going back to “waitgressing” in the “parlors”.
It is amazing how one word…..egg coffee–can trigger such a memory.
If only they still made “Butternut” coffee!
Next time we go that way to Fargo..we are going to stop by for some of that egg coffee:)
I remember watching men and women make egg coffee in the Swedish Mission Covenant Church where I grew up in Iowa. I recall them just cracking the egg and dropping it in after the brewing was fininshed. But, I’ve never understood, was the egg for flavor, chasing out the grounds or what?
We have a Swedish Covenant church building very near to where we live……it was first a rural schoolhouse, then a S.C. church and is now converted into a home. I remember going to church dinners there and those folks knew how to cook…andmake egg coffee!
From what I have learned about egg coffee…the making of it is pretty much confined to the midwest..MN, the Dakotas, Iowa etc. The egg mixed with the coffee “settles” the grounds ang gives you nice clear coffee. With the advent of the coffee makers with baskets, the need to make egg coffee probably lessened. I still associate its wonderful aroma with church basements of my past (Lutheran) at weddings and funerals and any other “doing” as the Scandinavian immigrant chidren refer to it!!!!
I think it makes the coffee taste better. I think the making of egg coffee came with the emigrants from Norway and Sweden. I googled it (egg coffee) and got some interesting results.
That makes sense: Coffee was made originally by just dumping loose coffee into hot water. The egg was to accumulate the grounds. I recall the aroma being more wonderful than I experience today.
You have me wanting to try it. Thanks for jogging memories of mine as well
Go for it! I googled “how to make egg coffee” and got the tips I needed. I am having a cup
of egg coffee right now as I sit here typing!