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Cream Coffee Cold
Place in a shaker half a cup of coffee, one tablespoonful of sugar, two of cream and four of crushed ice. Shake and pour into a tall glass, adding enough carbonated water to fill.
A soda-fountain drink in miniature: cold coffee, cream and sugar shaken over ice, then lengthened with seltzer. It works, but only if a couple of details go your way.
- The coffee must be cold and strongHalf a cup of coffee gets diluted twice over, first by melting ice and then by the soda water. Use double-strength brewed coffee or cold brew, chilled through, or the finished glass tastes of little but sweet fizzy cream.
- Crushed ice, not cubesFour tablespoons of crushed ice is roughly a small handful. Cubes will not chill and dilute fast enough in a short shake, and they make the shaker hard to work.
- Shake brieflyTen to fifteen seconds is plenty. Cream aerates quickly, and a long shake over crushed ice waters the drink down before the soda arrives.
- Carbonated water means plain seltzerUnflavoured soda, whether from a siphon or bottled. Club soda works; heavily mineralised waters may not sit well with the cream.
- Cream and fizzPour the soda down the inside of the glass over the back of a spoon. Dumped in, it drives the aerated cream up and over the rim. Light cream or half-and-half behaves better here than heavy cream.
- SugarA tablespoon of granulated sugar may not fully dissolve in a brief cold shake. Simple syrup of equivalent sweetness gives a cleaner drink.
- YieldOne tall glass, about 10 to 12 ounces once the soda is added.
Coffee crossed with soda water was standard soda-fountain business in the United States from the late nineteenth century onward, and drinks of this type appear under names such as coffee frappé and coffee soda. The recipe calls only for a 'shaker', which need not be a cocktail shaker, though shakers were common enough in American homes by the interwar years for a hot-weather cookbook to reach for one in a non-alcoholic drink. Drinks like this assumed a household could get ice, cream and soda water without much trouble.