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Coffee with Whipped Cream
For six cups of coffee of fair size, take one cup sweet cream whipped light with a little sugar; put into each cup the desired amount of sugar and about a table-spoon boiling milk; pour the coffee over these and lay upon the surface of the hot liquid a large spoonful of the frothed cream, giving a gentle stir to each cup before serving. This is known to some as meringued coffee, and is an elegant French preparation of the popular drink. Chocolate served! in this way is delicious. - Marion Harland.
A straightforward serving method rather than a brewing recipe, and it works with any strong coffee you already make. Two details carry it: the cream must be whipped soft, not stiff, and the cups must be genuinely hot.
- Cup sizeA "cup of fair size" here is probably something like 6 fl oz, closer to a period teacup than to a 12 oz mug. One cup of cream whipped gives enough froth for six such servings, with a large spoonful each.
- Whip to soft peaksThe cream should mound on a spoon but still slump — stiff cream sits on the surface as a lump instead of melting into the coffee when stirred. Sweeten it lightly, about a teaspoon of sugar to the cup of cream.
- Sweet cream"Sweet cream" means fresh, unsoured cream, not sweetened cream. Modern heavy or whipping cream is the equivalent; ultra-pasteurized cream whips but holds a coarser froth.
- The spoonful of boiling milkIt warms the sugar and the cup before the coffee goes in. The recipe specifies boiling milk, so scald it properly rather than merely warming it.
- Coffee strengthPeriod coffee of this kind was brewed strong and often cleared with egg; make yours stronger than you would drink it black, since the cream dilutes noticeably.
- Order of operationsSugar, then hot milk, then coffee, then cream, then one gentle stir. Stirring hard collapses the froth, which is the whole point of the dish.
- The chocolate variationThe recipe says only that chocolate served "in this way" is delicious, i.e. treated by the same method, with hot chocolate in place of the coffee.
Marion Harland was the pen name of Mary Virginia Terhune, a novelist turned household author whose Common Sense in the Household (1871) sold widely in America — and she is quoted throughout compilations like Buckeye Cookery (1877), which drew on named authorities to lend weight to their pages. The dish is close kin to the Viennese and French café habit of crowning coffee with whipped cream; the recipe itself records that some called it "meringued coffee," the froth presumably being likened to meringue. Coffee of the period was frequently boiled hard in an open pot and sometimes cleared with egg or eggshell, which may be why a spoonful of sweetened cream counted as "elegant."