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Mazagrau
Make the coffee exactly as for Black Coffee and have half a dozen goblets half filled with clear ice, pour in the coffee and add a pony of cognac to each glass, mixing well with a spoon, and then serve.
A six-serving iced coffee with brandy, written for a kitchen that had a block of ice and a coffee urn on hand. The measurements are bar measures rather than kitchen ones.
- A ponyA pony is one fluid ounce. Six glasses therefore take about 3/4 cup of cognac in total.
- "Clear ice"Ice chipped from a block. Large cubes or a single spear are the modern equivalent; small cubes will water the drink down before it reaches the table.
- Black Coffee, Waldorf-styleBlack Coffee -- The recipe sends you to the book's own Black Coffee. Brew it strong, or the ice will flatten it.
- Hot coffee onto icePouring hot coffee over ice chills it fast.
- Goblets, not cupsUse a stemmed glass of 8 to 10 ounces, half filled with ice. Warm the glass slightly or use tempered glass; thin crystal packed with ice and hit with boiling coffee can crack.
- SugarNone is specified, in keeping with after-dinner black coffee. If you want it sweet, stir sugar into the hot coffee before it meets the ice rather than trying to dissolve it in the cold glass.
- YieldSix goblets.
The name points to Mazagran, the Algerian town where a small French garrison held out against a much larger force in 1840; the episode became a set piece of French military legend, and coffee served cold in a tall glass is generally traced to the campaign habit of soldiers cutting coffee with water and spirits to make it drinkable in the heat. By the later nineteenth century café mazagran was a standard item in Parisian cafes, sometimes plain and iced, sometimes laced with rum or cognac, and served in a footed glass that took its name from the drink. Its appearance in Oscar Tschirky's book, in the middle of the Waldorf's French repertoire, reflects how closely the hotel's kitchen and service followed Paris practice: the drink is not explained or Americanised, simply listed among the coffees a waiter would be expected to produce on request.