Home › At the Fountain › Coffee, Hot
Coffee, Hot
American Condensed Coffee, 1 or 2 teaspoonfuls. Fill cup with hot water, add I lump of sugar and a tablespoonful of rich cream, or top with a large spoonful of whipped cream. This makes a much better cup of coffee than any coffee syrup, as the syrup is apt to make the coffee too sweet.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a kitchen one: the whole point is that the coffee flavour arrives from a bottle or tin already made, so a cup can be handed over in seconds. Two decisions carry the drink — the strength of the concentrate and the fact that sweetening is added by the cup, not built into the base.
- American Condensed CoffeeApparently a proprietary coffee concentrate of the period, strong coffee reduced to a syrup-thick base; the recipe's closing remark implies it was less sweet than a coffee syrup, though how sweet is not stated. The nearest current stand-ins are a bottled liquid coffee concentrate or a good instant; use roughly 1 to 2 teaspoons, or follow the label, since concentrates vary widely in strength.
- Why not coffee syrupThe note at the end is the hinge. Coffee syrup carries its own sugar load, so the barman loses control of sweetness; with an unsweetened concentrate he adds one lump and can add a second. Keep the concentrate unsweetened and sugar to taste.
- One lump of sugarA period cube is about a teaspoon, sometimes a little less.
- Rich creamThe recipe specifies a tablespoonful of 'rich cream' without defining it; light cream or half-and-half will read closer to a table cream than modern heavy cream will.
- The whipped-cream optionThe recipe offers a large spoonful of whipped cream in place of the tablespoon of plain cream. Whip it only to soft peaks or it will float as a lid rather than melting in.
- YieldOne cup, and it is meant to be assembled in the cup and served at once.
Condensed and extracted coffees circulated in American commerce from the Civil War period onward, when concentrated coffee rations were issued — though those rations were widely disliked. By the 1890s and 1900s a soda fountain could serve hot coffee from such a base without brewing on the premises. That is why this appears in a soda book at all: the fountain was judged on speed and consistency, and a bottled base meant the eleventh cup tasted like the first. The dispenser's aside about coffee syrup being too sweet sets the convenience of a pre-sweetened base against the loss of control over the finished cup.