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Hot Malted Milk with Coffee Syrup
Mix one tablespoonful of malted milk with two tablespoonfuls of coffee syrup to a smooth paste. Fill up with hot water. Stir well and serve with whipped cream. Season with a little salt.
A soda-fountain drink scaled to a single mug. The whole thing hinges on making a paste before adding water.
- Paste firstMalted milk powder clumps on contact with hot water. Work the tablespoon of powder into the syrup until it is completely smooth and glossy before any water goes in, or the drink will be gritty and no amount of stirring will fix it.
- Coffee syrupA fountain staple, not brewed coffee: a sweetened coffee concentrate, essentially strong coffee with sugar dissolved into it. Bottled coffee syrup of the Rhode Island type is the same idea and works directly. Two tablespoons carries a fair amount of sugar, so taste before adding more.
- Malted milkThe original means plain malted milk powder — malted barley, wheat flour and dried milk — best known at the time under the Horlick's name, though other brands were sold. Modern chocolate malt powder will change the drink entirely; use the unflavoured kind.
- "Fill up"Enough hot water to fill the mug, roughly 6 to 8 oz over the paste. Yield is one serving.
- Water temperatureHot but not boiling. Very hot water can give the dried milk solids a scalded note.
- The saltA pinch, no more than a few grains. It sharpens the coffee and cuts the sweetness of the syrup; it is doing the same job as salt in modern coffee drinks, not seasoning in the usual sense.
- Whipped creamUnsweetened, softly whipped, spooned on top rather than stirred in. The syrup already supplies the sugar.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of non-alcoholic drink books that appeared as national Prohibition came into view, and it borrows most of its technique straight from the commercial soda fountain u syrups, shakers, malted milk, whipped cream on top. Malted milk itself was a late nineteenth-century patent product, sold first as an invalid and infant food and only later adopted by fountain men, who are often said to have valued the body and distinctive toasted flavour a spoonful gave a drink. Coffee syrup, too, found a place behind the counter, though the reasons for its adoption are a matter of inference rather than record. The combination here — malt, coffee, hot water, cream — is essentially a hot version of the coffee malted.