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Vienna Coffee
This is the same as the ordinary coffee, with the addition of whipped cream at serving.
CAFÉ AU LAIT-This is made of equal quantities of filtered coffee and boiled milk.
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Two beverage notes rather than full recipes: both assume you already have a pot of strong filtered coffee standing by. The proportions are the whole of the instruction, so they are worth getting right.
- "Filtered coffee"In this period the term distinguished coffee made by pouring boiling water through grounds held in a cloth or perforated metal filter pot from coffee boiled with the grounds in the pot, which was still common. Any drip or pour-over brew answers the description; the point is a clean, grounds-free cup.
- The cream is the dishBeyond ordinary coffee, the whipped cream is the entire addition. The recipe does not say whether it is sweetened or whether it is floated or stirred in; cream whipped only to soft peaks will hold its shape briefly and then melt into the surface.
- Boiled milkBoiling milk was routine before pasteurisation was general, and it gives a softly cooked flavour. Scalding to about 180F (steaming, just short of a boil) gives much the same taste without the scorched note of a hard boil.
- Equal quantitiesHalf coffee, half milk is the classic cafe au lait ratio. The recipe gives no brew strength, but at this dilution a weak coffee will taste of little but warm milk, so brew on the strong side.
- ServingCafe au lait was traditionally poured from two pots, coffee and milk together, into a wide bowl or large breakfast cup. The recipe gives only a proportion, so scale it to the cup you are using.
Whipped cream on coffee is the signature of the Viennese coffee house, an institution that spread across Europe and into American cookbooks through the nineteenth century; by the time this book appeared, "Vienna coffee" was often used in English-language recipes for coffee topped with sweetened cream, distinct from the elaborate named drinks served in Vienna itself. Café au lait, the second entry, reached American breakfast tables as the French domestic norm, and its half-and-half proportion is what distinguishes it from a cup of black coffee merely lightened with cream. Both entries are terse, confined to what to add to the coffee and in what proportion.