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Iced Coffee with Orange Flavor
One quart of strong coffee and two cups of sugar boiled together ten minutes. Allow this to cool and add to each cup or glass one tablespoon of orange syrup and the same amount of cream partially whipped. The orange syrup may be obtained at the drug store or made by allowing cut oranges to stand in sugar and straining off the juice.
This may not sound promising, but a trial will convince the most skeptical.
It was suggested to me by observing the toothsomeness of coffee ice cream and orange ice when served together.- Mrs E. B. Jones.
A soda-fountain drink written for a household that could buy flavoring syrups by the bottle. The method is sound, but two of its instructions work against modern coffee.
- Boiling the coffeeTen minutes at a boil drives off aromatics and extracts bitter phenolics; the large quantity of sugar would go some way toward masking that. If you want the sweetened coffee base without the harshness, dissolve the sugar in hot strong coffee and hold it below a simmer; you lose only a little of the reduction.
- How sweet it isTwo cups of sugar to a quart is roughly a 1:2 sugar-to-liquid ratio by volume: very sweet, though thinner than a standard 1:1 simple syrup.
- "Strong coffee"In a period kitchen this would likely have meant boiled or percolator coffee, probably heavier than a modern drip pot. Brew at about double your usual strength, or use cold-brew concentrate, so the sugar and cream do not flatten it.
- Orange syrup from the drug storeSoda fountains operated out of pharmacies, and flavoring syrups were a pharmacy line. The modern equivalent is a bottled orange syrup for coffee or cocktails; orange curacao syrup or a good orange soda syrup works, but avoid orange extract, which is alcohol-based and far more concentrated.
- Making the syrup yourselfSliced oranges macerated in sugar throw a thin, fresh syrup in a few hours at room temperature or overnight refrigerated. It is a light syrup, not a boiled one, so it will not keep more than a few days; make what you need.
- Cream "partially whipped"Whip heavy cream only to the point where it thickens and falls in a ribbon, short of soft peaks. It should pour and marble into the coffee rather than sit on top as a cap.
- IceThe recipe never mentions ice despite the title, on the assumption that the base was chilled and poured over it. Chill the sweetened coffee thoroughly first, or the ice will melt straight through the syrup.
- YieldA quart of base, dosed as the recipe directs at a tablespoon each of syrup and cream per cup or glass, makes about four servings.
Mrs. Jones is explicit about her source: she was reverse-engineering a dessert pairing, coffee ice cream served alongside orange ice, into a drink. That kind of borrowing between the soda fountain and the home kitchen runs all through American beverage sections of the period. Fountain syrups were a druggist's stock in trade, sold by the bottle to households as well as dispensed at the counter, which is why the recipe can casually direct a reader to the drug store for orange flavoring. The slightly defensive tone here, "this may not sound promising," may suggest that coffee and orange was not yet a familiar combination to her readers, though that is speculation; it has since become a standard one.