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Plain Coffee Shake
Fill a tall glass one half full of cracked ice, and pour over three tablespoonfuls of coffee syrup and two tablespoonfuls of sweet cream. Shake well, fill up glass with soda water, and add a spoonful of whipped cream.
A soda-fountain drink from the temperance era, built the way a counterman would have built it: syrup and cream shaken over ice, then lengthened with charged water. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredients no longer sit on the average shelf.
- Coffee syrupFountain coffee syrup is strong brewed or extracted coffee cooked down with sugar until it pours thick — sweeter and heavier-bodied than merely sweetened coffee. Bottled coffee syrup is still made in New England and works directly; three tablespoonfuls is 1.5 fl oz.
- Sweet cream"Sweet" here means unsoured, not sweetened. Use light cream (roughly 18 to 20 percent fat) or half-and-half (roughly 10 to 12 percent); heavy cream will make the drink heavy and dull the coffee.
- Soda waterFountain soda water was freshly charged and hard, with more gas than most bottled club soda. A seltzer siphon or a carbonating machine gives a livelier drink; open the bottle at the last moment and pour down the side of the glass.
- ShakingThe recipe as written has you build and shake in the serving glass. If you prefer, shake the ice, syrup and cream in a separate shaker for about ten seconds, then tip the mixture into the tall glass and top with soda.
- Cracked iceCracked ice is broken or chipped from a block into irregular pieces. Standard cubes are close enough, but avoid crushed ice, which melts fast and waters the drink down before it reaches the table.
- The whipped creamUnsweetened, whipped only to soft peaks so it floats rather than sinks. A stiff, sugared cream on top of an already sweet syrup drink tips the balance.
- YieldOne tall glass, about 10 to 12 fl oz. Scale the syrup and cream in the same 3:2 ratio for larger glasses.
Books like this one belong to the era of the American soda fountain. Coffee syrup gave the fountain a drink with some backbone to it, and it survived longest in Rhode Island, where coffee milk made with the same syrup is still the state drink. The technique — syrup and cream shaken over ice, then charged water added last — is the standard fountain "shake" of the period, and it is generally thought to predate the thick ice-cream milkshake that later took the name; on that account the shaking, not the ice cream, is what the word originally described.