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Coffee Sauce
Pound one ounce best quality fresh roasted coffee beans in a mortar to a fine dust. Have a gill boiling milk in a small saucepan, add the coffee, cover the pan and let boil for two minutes; remove the pan from the fire, let stand on a table for ten minutes, place three egg yolks in a small saucepan and add two ounces of fine sugar. Strain the coffee through a cheesecloth into the egg pan, pour in a light gill cream, briskly mix with a whisk for two minutes, set the pan on the fire and continually mix for five minutes while heating without boiling, remove, strain through a cheesecloth and use as required.
This is a coffee-infused crème anglaise, thin enough to pour over puddings, charlottes or ice cream. Everything hinges on the last step: the custard must be heated but never allowed to boil.
- The gillA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. A "light gill" means a scant half cup — pour just short of the line. Total liquid is therefore about a cup.
- WeightsTwo ounces of fine sugar is about a quarter cup of caster or superfine sugar. One ounce of coffee beans is about a third of a cup of whole beans, or roughly five tablespoons ground.
- GrindingThe mortar is asking for a powder finer than drip grind — closer to Turkish. A burr grinder on its finest setting does it in seconds. The fineness matters because the infusion is only two minutes of boiling plus a ten-minute rest.
- Do not boil the custardOnce the yolks go in, keep the pan between 175 and 180F, stirring constantly. Above about 185F the yolk proteins seize and the sauce turns to sweet scrambled egg. Five minutes over low heat is a fair estimate, but the thermometer, or the sauce coating the back of a spoon, is the real signal.
- "Set the pan on the fire"A low burner, or a bowl over barely simmering water if you would rather have the margin. Coal ranges of the period offered a cooler end for work like this; a modern gas ring at its lowest is hotter than it looks.
- StrainingTwo strainings are called for and both earn their place: the first removes the coffee grounds, the second catches any chalazae and any yolk that has set on the pan bottom. Cheesecloth works; a fine mesh sieve is easier.
- Serving and keepingServe warm over steamed or bread puddings, or chill it and pour over ice cream. Refrigerate at once and use within two days; a custard sauce held warm for long periods is not a good idea.
Alexander Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) gathered dishes from the kitchens of Delmonico's and from his own long travels, and its sauce chapter is thoroughly French in method whatever the section heading says. This is crème anglaise — the pouring custard of egg yolks, sugar and scalded milk that underlies most cold sweet sauces in the classical repertoire — flavoured by infusion rather than by extract. Coffee essences and extracts did exist by this date, but steeping the ground bean in hot milk and straining it out, exactly as here, was a common way to get coffee into a custard. The instruction to pound the beans in a mortar rather than mill them suits a dust-fine grind that gives up its flavour quickly; a long steep in a hot dairy base picks up bitterness.