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Iced Coffee
Add hot milk to black coffee, flavor with vanilla, and sweeten to taste. Chill; serve in glasses with a tablespoon of chopped ice in each glass.
A four-line formula that assumes you already know what strong coffee tastes like and how sweet you want it. The only real work is deciding proportions, which the original leaves entirely to the cook.
- ProportionsNo ratio is given; the original leaves it to the cook. Equal parts hot strong coffee and hot milk is a reasonable starting point; for something closer to a modern iced latte, go two parts milk to one of coffee and brew the coffee stronger to compensate for melting ice.
- "Black coffee"Here this means coffee brewed without milk, not a particular roast. Brew it strong: double-strength drip or a long-pull espresso stands in well, since the drink is diluted twice over by milk and ice.
- Why the milk is hotThe recipe does not say, but sugar and vanilla dissolve more readily in warm liquid. Sweeten while it is warm, then chill; sugar stirred into cold coffee dissolves slowly.
- Chopped iceHousehold ice came as a block and was chipped or shaved with a pick and mallet, so the ice here would have been fine rather than cubed. A tablespoon of modern cubes will barely cool the glass; use a small handful, or freeze some of the coffee mixture into cubes.
- ChillingChill the mixture thoroughly, several hours or overnight, before it meets the ice. Pouring warm coffee over ice gives a watery drink.
- VanillaA quarter teaspoon of extract per pint is plenty; more and it reads as dessert rather than coffee. Add it sparingly and taste as you go.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. If you make a quart of finished liquid it will fill about four tall glasses, and it will keep a couple of days covered in the refrigerator, though the vanilla fades.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it surrounds its promotional chocolate recipes with a full general household repertoire. Iced coffee belonged with the dishes requiring ice: in 1907 chilled drinks depended on the iceman's block in the kitchen refrigerator, and the ability to serve something cold was a matter of household equipment rather than a matter of course. The hot-milk-and-vanilla treatment is characteristic of American iced coffee before the twentieth-century vogue for cold brew emened and flavored like a dessert, then cooled, unlike the unsweetened iced coffee of today.