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Ladies Luncheon Coffee
Put in strainer of a percolator, a heaping tablespoonful of finely ground coffee for every ordinary size cup of coffee, press the coffee down in the strainer slightly, and pour on your required amount of boiling water; put the lid on the strainer and leave the water to filter through. Add to coffee, when serving, to two parts coffee, one part hot milk and a tablespoonful of whipped cream, which will float on top of coffee, adding to it a rich flavor and a very inviting appearance. When you prepare coffee after this recipe, you will have a very delicious coffee, such as served in all first-class cafes of Europe.
FRENCH DRIP COFFEE "CAFE NOIR" For every one ordinary cup, take two tablespoonfuls of finely ground coffee, which press down slightly in the strainer, then pour on your boiling hot water, put lid on strainer and leave water to filter through. When the water is all filtered through, you have "Cafe Noir," a very strong black coffee which is usually drunk with brandy, the latter being poured in saucer with sugar and then ignited, leaving the spirits burn out. Sometimes it is diluted with hot water. MILK COFFEE OR "CAFE AU LAIT" Prepare the coffee the same as "Cafe Noir," with a little chicory added, about three ounces chicory to the pound of coffee, and when serving, add to it an equal amount of hot milk. When serving "Cafe au Lait" in the French cafes, the waiter brings the coffee pot in one hand and the vessel containing hot milk in the other and pours into the cup from both vessels at the same time. These recipes are followed in all the prominent cafes in Paris.
Three related methods for one piece of equipment: a drip pot, not the pumping percolator most people picture. The ratios are the useful part, and one of them is unusually strong by modern standards.
- "Percolator" means a drip pot"Percolator" here means a drip pot: an upper chamber holding the grounds in a fine metal strainer, water poured on top, coffee falling into the pot below -- exactly what "leave the water to filter through" describes. The word was used loosely at the time and could also mean a stovetop pumping percolator, but that device will not work with these instructions. A pour-over cone or a Melitta-style filter reproduces the method closely.
- Boiling water is too hotWater straight off a hard boil is 212F at sea level and can scald the grounds, pulling out bitter compounds. Take the kettle off, wait thirty to forty seconds, and pour at roughly 200F. "Boiling" was in any case about the only temperature a cook without a thermometer could specify.
- The two strengthsThe luncheon coffee is one heaping tablespoon per cup; the cafe noir doubles it to two. A heaping tablespoon of ground coffee is roughly 7-10 g, so the black version runs about 15-20 g to a cup of water -- roughly twice modern drip strength, though nothing like espresso, which uses far less water for the same dose. The recipe itself allows that it is sometimes diluted with hot water.
- GrindDrip strainers of the period were coarser than paper filters. "Finely ground" here means medium-fine, like table salt. A true espresso grind will clog a metal strainer and stall the pour.
- ChicoryRoasted chicory root, still sold whole or ground for coffee blending. Three ounces to the pound is roughly 16 percent by weight, a moderate New Orleans-style proportion. It adds body and a dark, faintly bitter sweetness but contains no caffeine, so the blend is weaker than it tastes.
- The cream floatThe whipped cream is best soft-whipped and unsweetened, spooned on gently so that it sits on the surface rather than sinking.
- The burning brandyIgniting spirits in an open saucer at the table is an old café flourish and a real fire risk in a modern kitchen with paper napkins and synthetic cloth. Nothing about it improves the coffee; the flame burns off some alcohol and caramelises the sugar.
- ServingThe luncheon coffee gives two parts coffee to one of hot milk plus the cream, so a pot brewed from four heaping tablespoons and four cups of water yields about six cups once the milk is added.
The distinction this page draws between filtered café noir and café au lait reflects a real French domestic practice that reached American households through the drip pot, sometimes called a biggin, which spread through the nineteenth century as an alternative to boiling grounds loose in the pot. Chicory in coffee is generally traced to Continental Europe under conditions of shortage and high import duty, and it survived long after the shortages did because drinkers came to prefer the taste; the same is true in New Orleans, where chicory coffee remains standard. The appeal to "all the prominent cafes in Paris" is doing a lot of work here: coffee served with hot milk poured simultaneously from two vessels was exactly the kind of small performance a hostess could learn from a book.