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Hot Coffee Ice Cream
Into a hot cup of coffee, add a spoonful of ice cream. This is one of St. Louis' popular drinks.
A two-ingredient fountain drink whose success rests entirely on proportion and temperature. Treat it as an affogato with the ratio inverted.
- The hinge: serve at onceThe ice cream begins dissolving the moment it touches the coffee, and within a minute you have lukewarm sweet coffee rather than a drink with a cold core. Assemble at the table and drink immediately.
- "A hot cup of coffee"The recipe specifies nothing beyond hot and strong-tasting enough to register against the cream; a standard cup of about 6 oz of strong brewed coffee works, or a double espresso lengthened slightly.
- "A spoonful"This means a serving spoon or fountain scoop, not a teaspoon — figure on a couple of tablespoons or a little more. The recipe names no flavour; vanilla is the plainest choice, coffee ice cream doubles the flavour and chocolate turns it into something closer to a mocha.
- SweeteningNo sugar is called for; taste before adding any, as a premium vanilla will usually sweeten the cup on its own.
- VesselA preheated heavy cup keeps the coffee hot long enough for the contrast to register; a thin glass drops the temperature fast.
- YieldOne drink. It does not scale into a pitcher — every cup must be built individually.
Soda fountain manuals of the early twentieth century collected regional house drinks the way bartenders' guides collected cocktails, and the note that this one belongs to St. Louis is the whole point of the entry: fountains competed on local specialties, and the manuals were how such a specialty travelled beyond the city that made it. The combination itself is old and widespread — hot coffee poured over or under ice cream appears in American fountain and lunch-counter practice, and is often said to have been familiar there before the Italian affogato was widely known to English-speaking drinkers; both rest on the same trick of pairing a bitter hot liquid with a cold sweet fat. Drinks like this mattered commercially because fountains needed to sell something in winter, when soda water and sundaes fell off; hot coffee, hot chocolate and hot malted milks filled the cold months, and folding ice cream into them let an operator keep using the same freezer cabinet year round.