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Filtered Coffee
(French or Percolated) 1 cup coffee (finely ground) 6 cups boiling water Various kinds of coffee-pots are on the market for making filtered coffee. They all contain a strainer to hold coffee without allowing grounds to mix with infusion. Some have additional vessel to hold boiling water, upon which coffee-pot may rest. Place coffee in strainer, strainer in coffee-pot, and pot on the range. Add gradually boiling water, and allow it to filter. Cover between additions of water. If desired stronger, re-filter. Serve at once with cut sugar and cream.
Put sugar and cream in cup before hot coffee. There will be perceptible difference if cream is added last. If cream is not obtainable, scalded milk may be substituted, or part milk and part cream may be used, if a diluted cup of coffee is desired. Coffee percolators are preferably used when coffee is made at table.
This is a pour-over in all but name, written before paper filters were common. The method holds up; only the vocabulary and a couple of the instructions need adjusting.
- "Percolated" does not mean a percolator"Percolated" here does not mean a pumping percolator -- around 1900 the word still commonly described any pot in which water passed once through a bed of grounds held in a metal strainer, though pumping stovetop percolators that recirculate the brew were also on sale by then and give a harsher cup. A cone dripper or French drip pot is the closest equivalent to what is described here.
- Proportions and yieldOne cup of finely ground coffee is roughly 3 ounces or 85 grams, to six cups (about 1.4 litres) of water. That works out near the standard modern ratio and serves six to eight.
- Grind"Finely ground" meant fine for a drip strainer, not espresso-fine. With a metal filter aim for a medium grind; too fine and the bed will clog and stall, which is the usual cause of a bitter, over-long extraction.
- Water temperatureFully boiling water over-extracts and makes the cup bitter. Take the kettle off the heat and let it stand briefly, to somewhere near 200F, before the first addition.
- Keeping the pot on the rangeThe recipe stands the pot on the range while the water is added, presumably to keep it hot through the brewing. On a modern burner it will stew the coffee and turn it bitter. Brew off the heat and hold the finished coffee in a warmed thermal carafe.
- Do not re-filterPassing the same coffee back through the same grounds, as suggested for a stronger cup, extracts the bitter late compounds without adding much strength. For a stronger cup use more coffee against the same water.
- Scalded milkMilk was scalded to kill off organisms in unpasteurised supplies and to keep it from souring in the hot cup. With pasteurised milk you only need it warmed, so it does not chill the coffee.
- Cut sugarLump sugar cut from a sugar loaf, used much as cube sugar was by this date. Granulated sugar does the same work.