Vienna Coffee
Filter instead of boiling the coffee, allowing one table-spoon ground coffee to each person and " one for the pot;" put a quart of cream into a custard-kettle or pail set in boiling water, and put it where it will keep boiling; beat the white of an egg to a froth, and mix well with three table-spoons cold milk. As soon as the cream is hot, remove from fire, add the mixed egg and milk, stir together briskly for a minute, and then serve.
Another method is to pour boiling water over the coffee, cover closely, boil one minute, remove to the side of the stove a few minutes to settle, and serve. Allow two heaping table-spoons coffee to a pint of water. The less time the coffee is cooked the more coffee is required, but the finer the flavor. The late Professor Blot protested against boiling the coffee at all, as in his opinion the aroma was evaporated, and only the bitter flavor left.
Two coffees in one entry: a filtered pot served under hot cream lightened with beaten egg white, and a fallback boiled method for those without a filter. The cream is the point of the dish.
- The hinge: do not boil the coffeeThe whole entry argues for filtration or, at most, a single minute of contact heat. Coffee held at a boil turns bitter and flat; a pour-over or drip at just off the boil (about 200F) gives the clean, aromatic cup the recipe is after.
- Custard-kettleA double boiler. Set a bowl or pan over simmering water rather than heating a quart of cream directly, which scorches at the bottom before the top is warm.
- Coffee-to-water ratioTwo heaping tablespoons per pint of water works out to roughly 1:16 by volume, within the ordinary range for drip, and each cup is further cut with a generous pour of hot cream. "One tablespoon per person and one for the pot" is the same idea expressed for a full service.
- GrindThe recipe does not specify a grind. For a paper cone use a medium grind; a fine espresso grind will stall the drip and over-extract.
- The egg whiteOne white beaten to a froth and slackened with three tablespoons of cold milk, stirred into a quart of near-boiling cream, gives body and a faint foam rather than a distinct meringue. It is not whipped cream and will not hold; serve at once. If serving anyone vulnerable to salmonella, use pasteurized egg white, since the cream comes off the heat as the egg goes in.
- QuantityA quart of cream is a great deal for one pot of coffee, and modern palates find it heavy. Half-and-half, or cream cut with milk, is closer to the drink most people expect and still carries the egg white.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield; a quart of cream is enough for a large party. Scale the cream down before you scale the coffee.
Buckeye Cookery appeared in 1877, when Viennese coffee-house style, meaning coffee served with hot cream or whipped cream rather than black, was in fashion in American cookbooks. The "late Professor Blot" cited at the end is Pierre Blot, a French-born cooking teacher who ran a cooking academy in New York in the 1860s and published the Hand-Book of Practical Cookery in 1867; he died in 1874, so the entry cites him posthumously. His objection to boiling coffee, that the aroma goes up in steam and only the bitterness stays behind, ran against the common American practice of boiling coffee in an open pot, often cleared with an egg.