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Hot Malted Milk and Coffee
Mix one teaspoonful of malted milk and one teaspoonful of ground coffee with enough hot water to fill a cup. Boil three minutes, sweeten to taste, and strain.
A single-cup drink from the era when malted milk powder was a pantry staple and coffee was boiled rather than brewed. The method is sound but the proportions are faint by current tastes.
- Malted milkThis means the dried powder of malted barley, wheat and milk sold under names like Horlick's, not a malted milkshake. Plain unflavoured malted milk powder is still made and is what the recipe wants; chocolate malt drink mixes will overwhelm the coffee.
- StrengthOne teaspoon of ground coffee to a full cup is weak by modern standards, closer to a hot beverage than to coffee. Two to three teaspoons per cup gives what most drinkers now expect.
- Boiling, not brewingBoiled coffee was the American norm into the 1920s. Three minutes at a rolling boil extracts bitter compounds and drives off aromatics; holding the pot just below a simmer for the same time gives a rounder cup, and the malt masks some of the harshness either way.
- StrainingGrounds boiled loose need a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth, or a coffee filter, not a tea strainer. Strain into a warmed cup.
- LumpingMalted milk powder clumps when it meets hot liquid. Slake the teaspoonful with a spoonful of cold water to a smooth paste before the hot water goes in.
- YieldOne cup, about 6 to 8 fluid ounces as cups were then reckoned. It scales directly for a pot.
Malted milk had been a commercial product since the early 1880s, promoted first as an invalid and infant food before drugstore fountains turned it into a treat, and mixing it into coffee sat squarely in that tradition of the fortifying, wholesome, alcohol-free cup. Boiled coffee of this kind was standard American practice at the time; percolators and drip pots were known but had not yet displaced simply putting grounds and water in a pot together over the fire.