MovieChat Forums > Spellbound (1945) Discussion > Coffee with an egg in it (?)

Coffee with an egg in it (?)

posted 20 years ago by David_G_Young
4 replies | jump to latest

I'm sure this is not the original line but it's what the quotation sounds like to me:

Just before J.B. (as his real name is not known at the time) wakes up from his bromide-induced sleep, Constance Petersen leaves Doctor Brulov to make coffee. What she says as she leaves sounds distinctly like:

'I'll make you coffee, with an egg in it'.

This can't really be what she is saying, so can anyone tell me what the real line is?

By the way, Doctor Brulov has a funny way of bringing a patient round after sedation. Slap twice, then make a threatening gesture as if about to hit them. Obviously copied by Doctor Rumak in 'Airplane'.

[–] kag-4 20 years ago

That is what she says. The DVD commentary by a Hitchcock historian confirms it. The historian jokes that Constance is making coffee with an egg in it "as if all have hangovers."

So, it's weird, but you heard right.

Kat

Intercourse the Penguin!

[–] David_G_Young 20 years ago

Thanks for the information, Kat. That comes as something of a surprise but the hangover explanation clears it up somewhat.

[–] kag-4 20 years ago

No problem!

Kat

Intercourse the Penguin!

[–] feodoric 14 years ago

Six years later...:-)

What ? Hasn't anybody on this forum heard of that trick ? Seriously, it's as old as diners and cheap percolator coffee ! In order to remove some of the acridity of cheap brown percolator coffee that is going to stand for a whole day in that big percolating machine, one puts one or two whole raw eggs in it, and that is supposed to improve the taste of it considerably.

I've worked for two summers in a place where they had that huge cafeteria that was feeding large teams of lumberjacks and other hard-working people in the woods. They needed to make gallons of the stuff, and that's where I first learned about the technique.

With the advent of more advanced, better timed and conceived coffee machines, maybe they don't need to do this anymore. But I have seen the "egg trick" in many places from the '70s to at least in the mid-'90s.

I would have thought that other youngsters like me would have known this secret which used to be widely used wherever there were percolators!

Now, the psychoanalytical version of this ... :-)