Home › Beverages › Perfection Coffee
Perfection Coffee
2 cups strong iced coffee 2 cups milk cracked ice 4 tablespoons whipped cream 1/5 teaspoon brown cinnamon Have both coffee and milk thoroughly chilled; mix well, add cracked ice and when serving put the whipped cream on each glass and dust over with cinnamon. Serves 4.
An iced coffee-and-milk cooler from the era when cold coffee drinks were served in tall glasses at soda fountains. Everything depends on the coffee being cold before it meets the ice.
- Chill first, alwaysThe instruction to have both coffee and milk thoroughly chilled is the hinge of the recipe. Pouring hot or warm coffee over cracked ice dilutes it to nothing; brew it double-strength, cool it, and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.
- "Strong" coffeeThe recipe specifies only "strong," with no ratio given. Brewing at roughly double the usual strength, on the order of two tablespoons of grounds per cup of water, compensates for the milk and melting ice; standard-strength coffee will taste thin.
- Cracked iceCracked ice is ice broken into irregular pieces smaller than cubes, made in the period by hitting a block with an ice pick. Pulse cubes briefly in a food processor, or wrap them in a towel and crush with a rolling pin; do not use finely crushed or shaved ice, which waters the drink down fast.
- The cinnamon"Brown cinnamon" most likely means ordinary ground cinnamon, probably the darker cassia type as distinct from paler Ceylon cinnamon, though the term is not clearly defined here. Any supermarket ground cinnamon works; dust it over the cream just before it goes to the table, since it sinks and clumps if it sits.
- Whipped creamOne tablespoon per glass, whipped to soft peaks and unsweetened unless you want the drink sweet. Sweeten the coffee itself instead, while it is still warm, so the sugar dissolves.
- Yield and glasswareFour cups of liquid plus ice fills four 10 to 12 oz tumblers. Serve with a long spoon; the cream needs stirring in partway through.
Iced coffee drinks appeared with increasing frequency in American beverage chapters from the late nineteenth century onward, alongside domestic ice delivery and the rise of the soda fountain, which accustomed households to cold drinks topped with whipped cream. "Perfection" is one of a number of aspirational recipe titles of the period, naming a standard claimed rather than an origin; nothing here identifies the source of this particular one. Cinnamon-dusted, cream-topped coffee is often associated with Viennese cafe practice, but that connection is a suggestion rather than a documented line of borrowing.