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Hot Malted Milk Coffee
Two teaspoonfuls malted milk, 1 ounce coffee syrup, 7 ounces hot water. Prepare as with hot malted milk.
A fountain formula rather than a home recipe: it assumes a canister of malted milk powder, a bottle of coffee syrup and a hot-water spigot within arm's reach. The proportions work perfectly well over a stove.
- The measures are fluid ouncesOne ounce of coffee syrup is 2 tablespoons; 7 ounces of hot water is a scant cup (3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons). Total volume is one 8-ounce mug, which is a single serving.
- Malted milk powderMalted barley and wheat extract with dried milk, broadly the same sort of product sold today. Plain malted milk powder, not the chocolate kind, is what the book means. Two teaspoons is a modest quantity; other fountain formulas call for more.
- Coffee syrupA sweetened coffee concentrate, still bottled commercially in New England. In its absence, reduce strong brewed coffee with an equal weight of sugar until it pours thickly. Instant coffee stirred into simple syrup is a serviceable stand-in.
- The step that matters"Prepare as with hot malted milk" points back to the book's hot malted milk entry; standard fountain practice was to wet the powder first. Stir the malted milk into the syrup to a smooth paste in the bottom of the mug, then add the hot water in a thin stream while stirring. Powder dumped straight into hot water tends to lump.
- Water temperatureHot rather than boiling. The book gives no temperature; water at a full boil can scald the milk solids and give the drink a cooked taste.
- FinishingNutmeg, and sometimes whipped cream, turn up on other hot fountain drinks. Neither is in the formula, and neither is out of place.
Malted milk powder was developed in the 1880s as an infant and invalid food, and its move to the soda fountain was a matter of convenience: it was shelf-stable, needed no ice, and dissolved in anything. By the 1900s and 1910s American fountains ran year-round, and the hot side of the menu — hot malted milk, hot chocolate, hot beef tea, hot lemonade — carried them through winters when nobody wanted a phosphate. Coffee syrup belongs to the same logic, a bottled concentrate that let a dispenser produce a coffee-flavored drink without a coffee urn or a barista's attention; it survives most visibly in Rhode Island, where coffee milk made with it is the state drink. This entry is essentially two shortcuts stacked on each other, which is what a fountain formula book is for.