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Coffee Syrup (Mocha Coffee lb Java Coffee lb)
Mocha Coffee, ½ lb.; Java Coffee, ½ lb.; Boiling Water, 1 gallon. Boil together, or pass through a suitable filter coffee pot, until 1 gallon of infusion is obtained; settle, and add 10 pounds granulated sugar. Simple syrup is the basis of all soda water syrups and the formula for making it is given in this book.
This is a fountain syrup, not a drink: it is meant to be diluted heavily with carbonated water at the moment of serving, which is why the coffee is brewed at roughly double normal strength and the sugar load is so high.
- The hinge: don't boil the sugar inBrew the gallon of infusion first, let it settle and decant it off the fines, then dissolve the sugar into it warm. Boiling once the sugar is in drives off the volatile coffee aroma and leaves a flat, caramel-tinged syrup.
- Coffee strengthOne pound of ground coffee to one gallon of water is about twice normal drip strength. That is deliberate; the syrup is cut heavily with soda water in the glass.
- "A suitable filter coffee pot"A percolator or drip urn of the period. A large pour-over, a French press followed by a paper or cloth filter, or a cloth-strained batch all work; the aim is a gallon of clear infusion with no grit, since fines will make the finished syrup muddy.
- Mocha and JavaBoth were originally place names, Mocha for the Yemeni port and Java for the Indonesian island, and by 1900 they were sold loosely as flavour types rather than provenance. A modern Mocha-Java blend, or any medium-roast blend of a bright African or Arabian coffee with a heavier Indonesian one, gives the intended profile.
- Sugar and yieldTen pounds of granulated sugar into one gallon of infusion works out near 55 percent sugar by weight, within the range of commercial fountain syrups. Expect about 1 3/4 gallons of finished syrup, enough for well over 150 glasses.
- ServingPour 1 to 1 1/2 fluid ounces of syrup into a tall glass and fill with cold carbonated water, or use the same amount over a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a coffee ice cream soda. It also works as a base for iced coffee cut with milk.
- Keeping itThere is no preservative here. Refrigerate it, and use it within a couple of weeks; coffee flavour fades quickly and surface mould can take hold.
- Simple syrup cross-referenceThe closing note points to the book's own simple syrup formula, which is generally sugar dissolved in water to a fixed density. It is not needed for this recipe as written, since the coffee infusion itself takes the place of the water.
Coffee syrup belongs to the soda fountain, an American institution that grew out of the pharmacy counter: druggists already kept flavouring syrups, carbonated water and precise scales, and by the late nineteenth century the dispensing of soda drinks had become a trade with its own manuals, of which this is one. The "Mocha and Java" pairing named here was the standard American coffee blend of the era, taking its two halves from the Yemeni port of Mocha and the Dutch plantations of Java, and the phrase survived as a generic label long after the beans themselves came from elsewhere. Concentrated flavouring syrups of exactly this kind, held at fountain strength and cut with soda at the moment of serving, are the direct ancestors of the bottled soft drink; coffee syrup itself never quite disappeared, and remains a regional staple in Rhode Island, where it is stirred into milk.