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Iced Coffee
1 Quart Strong Coffee 3/4 Cup Yellow Corn Syrup Cream to Make Good Color Serve with cracked ice.
A four-ingredient formula that assumes you already have a pot of strong coffee going. The only real decisions are how strong the coffee is and how much of the syrup you actually want.
- Brew it strong, then chillThe recipe gives no ratio, but "strong" here presumably means noticeably stronger than a breakfast cup, since ice and cream will dilute it. Chilling the quart before serving is worth doing; hot coffee poured over cracked ice melts it and thins the drink.
- Yellow corn syrupCorn syrup of this period was sold in lighter (white or crystal) and darker (golden or dark) grades, and "yellow" most likely means one of the darker ones, with more caramel character. Today's dark corn syrup is probably the closest match; light corn syrup will work but tastes only of sugar.
- Adjust the sweeteningThree-quarters of a cup of syrup in a quart is very sweet by current taste, close to a bottled coffee drink. Start with a quarter cup, taste cold, and add from there, since sweetness reads weaker in a chilled drink than a warm one.
- "Cream to make good color"The instruction is by eye rather than by measure: enough to bring the coffee to a pale caramel. Add it after the syrup is dissolved so you can judge the shade.
- Cracked iceCracked ice is ice broken small, not shaved or cubed, and it chills fast because of the surface area. It also melts fast, so serve immediately or the last of the glass turns thin.
- YieldA quart of coffee plus syrup and cream makes roughly six generous glasses once the ice takes up room.
Iced coffee had become a familiar part of American cookbooks by the turn of the twentieth century, as domestic iceboxes and commercial ice delivery made cold drinks a routine part of summer entertaining rather than a luxury. The corn syrup here is the tell: glucose syrup was industrialised in the United States in the late nineteenth century and heavily promoted to home cooks in the early twentieth as a cheaper, non-crystallising alternative to sugar. Syrup has a practical advantage over granulated sugar in a cold drink, since it dissolves without a grainy residue at the bottom of the glass, and that convenience is exactly why a beginner's book like this one recommends it.