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Iced Coffee
Prepare a strong coffee. Fill tumblers half full of cracked ice and add to it the coffee. Add sugar and whipped cream to taste. TEA Freshly boiled water should always be used in making tea. This is important because water below the boiling point does not develop the full flavor of this beverage. Scald an earthenware teapot, put tea in, allowing 1 teaspoon of tea to each cup of freshly boiling water; pour over it the boiling water; cover closely; let stand for three to five minutes without boiling; pour at once. It is advisable to strain tea from grounds. A tea-ball may be used, and allow the same proportion of tea to water. Place tea-ball in cup, and pour over it freshly boiling water. Remove tea-ball in a minute or more, according to strength desired.
Two beverages have been run together here: iced coffee in the first three sentences, then a short primer on tea. Both are sound, and the tea instructions are close to what a modern tea merchant would tell you.
- "Strong coffee" means double strength"Strong coffee" means brew it stronger than usual -- Coffee poured over a tumbler of cracked ice will be diluted as the ice melts, so brew well above your usual ratio or the finished glass tastes thin and watery.
- Cool the coffee firstThe original pours hot coffee straight onto ice. Chilling the brewed coffee before it meets the ice gives you far less dilution; brewing it the day before and refrigerating works well.
- TumblersA tumbler of the period held perhaps 8 to 10 oz, so half full of ice is roughly half a cup of ice per serving. This recipe makes as many glasses as you brew coffee for; count on about 4 to 5 oz of concentrated coffee per glass.
- Sugar goes in warmGranulated sugar dissolves poorly in an iced drink. Stir it into the coffee while it is still hot, or keep a simple syrup for the purpose.
- Whipped cream "to taste"The recipe gives no detail beyond this; cream whipped to soft peaks and spooned on top will melt down into the coffee.
- Earthenware, and why it is scaldedAn unglazed or thickly glazed ceramic pot holds heat better than glass or thin metal, and rinsing it with boiling water first keeps the pot from stealing heat from the brew. The point still holds for any teapot.
- Tea timing depends on the leafThree to five minutes suits black tea, which is presumably what is meant here since no type is named. Green and white teas turn bitter at that length and want 2 to 3 minutes at 175-185F rather than a full boil; oolong sits between the two.
- "Without boiling"The instruction is to let the pot stand off the heat, not to keep it simmering. Tea held at a boil extracts more tannin and can go harsh and astringent.
Iced coffee only became a household drink once ice was a household commodity, which in the United States meant the second half of the nineteenth century, when the natural-ice trade and later mechanical refrigeration put a block in the icebox of ordinary homes. The instruction to crack the ice rather than measure out cubes is a tell: cubes came with the electric refrigerator, and before that ice arrived as a sawdust-packed block to be chipped with a pick. The tea notes that follow are conservative, brief and aimed at a cook who already knew the basics. The insistence on genuinely boiling water for black tea and on a scalded pot was a standard point of the period, and it has survived intact into modern tea instruction.