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Black Coffee
Grind six tablespoonfuls of coffee-beans in a mill. Put the coffee on the filter with the strainer over, and pour on three cupfuls of boiling water. Put on the cover and let it infuse, but do not let it boil again. (2.) Put three pints of cold water in an earthen pot on the range, and when it boils add four and a half ounces of ground coffee, then place the pot on the corner of the stove and let it boil for three minutes. Take a small piece of charcoal, hot, and put in the coffee. Let this stand for three minutes and then remove the skimmer from the top of the coffee. (3.) Pour one quart of boiling water on one cupful of coffee, stir and let stand in a warm place for fifteen minutes, or boil for five minutes.
Three methods for after-dinner coffee, given in the compressed shorthand of a professional kitchen. The ratios differ wildly between them, and that is the first thing to sort out.
- The three strengths are not equivalentMethod 1 works out to roughly 40 g of coffee per litre of water, on the weak side of modern filter practice. Methods 2 and 3 are near 90 g per litre, well above the current standard of about 60 g, in keeping with the small, strong after-dinner café noir served in a demitasse. Choose according to the cup you intend to pour it into.
- MeasuresFour and a half ounces of ground coffee is about 128 g; three pints is 1.4 L (the book uses US pints). "One cupful of coffee" in method 3 means ground coffee by volume, roughly 80–85 g, not brewed coffee.
- The filter in method 1The text says only "filter" and "strainer", which most likely means a chambered drip pot with a perforated plate rather than paper. A pour-over cone with a paper filter gives much the same result; grind medium, and the cover keeps the brew hot while it drains.
- Do not boil it againThe instruction that matters in method 1. Coffee held at a boil turns bitter and flat as the aromatics are driven off. Method 2, by contrast, does say to boil for three minutes on the corner of the range; holding it to a bare simmer there is a modern preference, not what the text asks for.
- Grind coarse for the boiled methodsMethods 2 and 3 have no filter at all — the grounds settle and you pour off the top. A fine grind here gives you silt in the cup. Coarse, as for a French press, and let it settle undisturbed before pouring.
- The piece of hot charcoalAn old trick for clearing and mellowing the brew, once done with a lump of hardwood charcoal from the fire. Do not attempt it with modern briquettes, which contain binders and, in instant-light form, lighter fluid. Skipping it costs you nothing.
- "Remove the skimmer"Read this as skimming the froth and floating grounds off the surface with a skimmer or spoon before serving.
- YieldMethod 1 makes about three cupfuls, some 700 ml. Method 2 makes about 1.4 L and method 3 about 950 ml of very strong coffee, poured out in small cups.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the working habits of a large American hotel kitchen at the end of the nineteenth century, where "black coffee" meant the small, strong, unmilked cup that closed a formal dinner — the French café noir, served in a demitasse with liqueurs. The three methods here set the drip filter, of the kind that spread through the early nineteenth century, alongside the older practice of boiling grounds loose in an earthenware pot and clearing the brew afterwards. Clarifying coffee with a hot coal, eggshell or a splash of cold water appears repeatedly in nineteenth-century household manuals, all of it aimed at settling the grounds and softening a brew that boiling had made harsh. That method 1 insists on not letting the coffee boil again suggests the point was understood in the Waldorf's kitchens, if not in every home.