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Cafe Frappe
White 1 egg 1/2 cup cold water 1/2 cup ground coffee 4 cups boiling water 1 cup sugar Beat white of egg slightly, add cold water, and mix with coffee; turn into scalded coffee-pot, add boiling water, and let boil one minute; place on back of range ten minutes; strain, add sugar, cool, and freeze same as Pineapple Frappe. Serve in frappe glasses, with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored.
A coffee granita in all but name, built on the old egg-shell-and-white method of clarifying boiled coffee. The hinge is the texture: frappe means scraped ice crystals, not a smooth ice cream, so it must be stirred and broken up as it freezes.
- The egg white is a clarifier, not an enrichmentBeaten white mixed with cold water and dry grounds coagulates during the boil and traps fine sediment, which was how cooks got clear coffee before paper filters. It is cooked through in the process, so there is no raw-egg concern. Skip it entirely if you brew and strain through a fine filter instead.
- Coffee strengthHalf a cup of ground coffee is roughly 1.5 oz to 4 cups water, which works out at about 44 g per litre — around or a little below modern drip strength, so do not be tempted to cut it, since freezing and whipped cream both mute coffee flavour. Use a medium-coarse grind; anything fine will slip through the strainer.
- "Boil one minute"This is the boiled-coffee method and it is not a mistake, but modern extraction is unforgiving of it: a full rolling boil pulls bitter compounds fast. Bring it just to the boil, then move it off the heat for the ten-minute steep.
- Back of the rangeOn a coal or wood range the back was the coolest zone, well below boiling but hot enough to hold the infusion. On a modern hob, cover the pot and set it off the burner entirely for the ten minutes.
- Scalded coffee-potRinsing the pot with boiling water before brewing keeps the temperature from dropping when the grounds go in. Worth doing; it is a one-second step.
- Freezing without a machine"Freeze same as Pineapple Frappe" means a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt, worked only until mushy. In a home freezer, pour into a shallow metal pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes for 3-4 hours until it is loose crystals. An ice-cream machine will give you a smoother sorbet texture, which is a different thing.
- SugarOne cup of sugar to the recipe's liquid is roughly 15 to 17 percent by weight, which both sweetens and keeps the ice from setting into a solid block. Cut it much below three-quarters of a cup and you risk a coffee brick rather than a frappe.
- Yield and servingRoughly a quart of finished ice, or four to six small glasses. Serve immediately once scraped, with lightly sweetened whipped cream and a little vanilla; it slumps within minutes at room temperature.