No. 3609

Iced Coffee

Cafe Glace

Black Coffee.-Iced coffee, as it is called in New York, is simply black coffee cooled in a china freezer, having lightly salted ice placed around.

Mixed Coffee.-Mixed coffee is prepared the same, only mixing the whole of the following ingredients together: One pint of milk, one gill of cream, one quart of black coffee and one gill of syrup at thirty-two degrees. Put the mixture into a china or enameled freezer with lightly salted ice around, and serve when the coffee is exceedingly cold.

Brandy Coffee.-One quart of black coffee, six ounces of sugar, one gill of brandy; to be mixed and cooled the same as the black coffee.

Iced Coffee in Sherbet.-Have one quart of black coffee mixed with one quart of cream and twelve ounces of sugar; place it in a freezer with salted ice around, detach from the sides as fast as the ice adheres, and when sufficiently cold and firm serve in glasses.

← No. 3608 Iced Chocolate Iced Drinks No. 3610 Gramolates or Granite with Orange →

For the Modern Kitchen

Four variations on cold coffee from Ranhofer's chapter of iced drinks, written for a kitchen with an ice house rather than a refrigerator. Two are simply chilled drinks; the last is a churned coffee sherbet.

GillA gill is half a cup, 4 fluid ounces. So the mixed coffee takes 1 pint milk, 1/2 cup cream, 1 quart coffee and 1/2 cup syrup — about 1 3/4 quarts, or six to eight servings.
"Syrup at thirty-two degrees"This is density on the Baume scale, the standard confectioner's measure of the period, not a temperature. It indicates a heavy sugar syrup, denser than a plain equal-parts simple syrup, boiled until clear and cooled.
The china freezerA lidded porcelain or enamelled pail set in a tub of ice and salt; the recipe specifies china or enamel rather than bare metal. A bowl set in an ice bath, or simply a covered jug in the refrigerator, does the same work.
Salted iceSalt lowers the melting point of the ice and drives the bath well below freezing. "Lightly salted" is the instruction because the first three drinks are meant to be chilled hard, not frozen; the sherbet wants a saltier, colder bath.
Black coffeeRanhofer means strong brewed coffee without milk, not espresso. Brew it stronger than you would drink it hot — chilling and dilution from any melting ice flatten coffee noticeably.
The sherbet is the one that needs technique"Detach from the sides as fast as the ice adheres" is scraping the frozen film back into the liquid, which is what a churn does mechanically. Without constant agitation you get a solid coffee ice rather than a sherbet; an ice cream machine handles the whole instruction.
Sugar in the sherbetTwelve ounces of sugar to two quarts of liquid is not excessive — sugar depresses the freezing point and keeps the mixture scoopable. Cutting it will give a harder, icier result.
Brandy coffeeOne gill is half a cup of brandy to a quart of coffee; alcohol depresses the freezing point, so the mixture would resist setting firm in any case. The recipe directs it to be cooled like the plain black coffee. Six ounces of sugar is about 3/4 cup.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working reference, which is why the entry pauses to note what iced coffee "is called in New York" — he is translating a French kitchen's vocabulary for an American house. Cafe glace in Paris could mean anything from chilled sweetened coffee to a proper coffee ice cream, and Ranhofer covers the full range here in one entry, ending with a churned sherbet. The reliance on ice and salt rather than mechanical refrigeration is no precise marker of date — the technique was in use long before and after — but it does place the recipe in a working kitchen of its kind: a large restaurant kept ice on hand in quantities that made a tub of it an unremarkable piece of equipment.