Vienna Coffee
Filter instead of boiling the coffee, allowing one table-spoon ground coffee to each person and " one for the pot;" put a quart of cream into a custard-kettle or pail set in boiling water, and put it where it will keep boiling; beat the white of an egg to a froth, and mix well with three table-spoons cold milk. As soon as the cream is hot, remove from fire, add the mixed egg and milk, stir together briskly for a minute, and then serve.
Another method is to pour boiling water over the coffee, cover closely, boil one minute, remove to the side of the stove a few minutes to settle, and serve. Allow two heaping table-spoons coffee to a pint of water. The less time the coffee is cooked the more coffee is required, but the finer the flavor. The late Professor Blot protested against boiling the coffee at all, as in his opinion the aroma was evaporated, and only the bitter flavor left.
This is really two recipes braided together: a hot frothed cream to pour into coffee, and a note on brewing method. The cream is the part that makes it "Vienna."
- The hinge: don't boil the creamThe quart of cream is heated in a vessel set in boiling water precisely so it cannot scorch or break. Scald it until hot, then take it off the fire before the egg goes in, as the recipe directs.
- Custard-kettleA double boiler. Any heatproof bowl or saucepan set over a pan of simmering water does the same job.
- Coffee ratioOne tablespoon of ground coffee per cup plus one for the pot is close to modern filter practice — roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons per 6 oz of water. The second method's two heaping tablespoons per pint is weaker than most people brew today.
- The egg whiteOne white beaten to a froth and slackened with three tablespoons of cold milk gives the cream body and a foam cap. Because the cream is off the fire before the white goes in, the white may not reach a safe temperature; use pasteurized whites, and particularly so for anyone vulnerable.
- "Boil one minute"The alternative brewing method is a period boiled-coffee technique and will taste harsh and silty by current standards. A press or pour-over gives what the recipe is actually after.
- Professor BlotPierre Blot was a French-born cooking teacher and writer active in New York in the 1860s and 70s; "the late Professor Blot" dates this text to after 1874. His objection to boiling coffee is now standard advice.
- YieldA quart of cream plus the egg is enough for roughly eight to ten cups of coffee — halve or quarter it for a small household.
Vienna coffee — Wiener Melange and its relatives — reached American cookbooks through the coffee-house culture of Habsburg Vienna, which by the nineteenth century was famous enough that "Vienna" on a coffee recipe simply meant coffee served with a great deal of hot cream or whipped cream rather than plain black. American interest sharpened after the Vienna World Exposition of 1873, though the vogue for "Vienna bread" and Vienna rolls in the same generation of household manuals is more usually traced to the Vienna Bakery at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial. What is telling here is how much of the entry is argument rather than instruction: boiled coffee was the American default, made in an open pot on the range and often cleared with egg shell or egg white, and writers like Pierre Blot spent years insisting that filtering preserved the aroma. The compiler — The Dixie Cook Book is the source usually named, though the page itself does not settle it — hedges, giving the filter method first, the boiled method second, and Blot's protest last, which is a fair snapshot of a kitchen mid-argument.