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Black, or After Dinner Coffee
Black, or after dinner coffee, is made in the same way; and can be made much stronger.
Vienna coffee pots or machines are fine for making after dinner coffee at table or library. It is so pleasant to serve in living room or library. With the after dinner coffee, serve water wafers and neufchatel, with which has been mixed chopped nut meats, a dash of red pepper and a little olive oil.
The coffee here is made by reference to the preceding entry, so what is actually new on this page is the strength, the equipment, and the cheese spread served alongside. Proportions for the spread are not given, which is normal for the period.
- "Much stronger"After-dinner coffee was served in small demitasse cups of roughly 2 to 3 fl oz, and the recipe simply directs a stronger brew than the preceding entry without giving a ratio. Something in the region of 2 tablespoons of ground coffee to 4 oz of water will get you there; it is meant to be drunk in a few sips, not by the mugful.
- Vienna coffee potThe term of the period is usually applied to a vacuum or siphon brewer, a two-chambered glass and metal device heated by a spirit lamp, though the name was used loosely. Part of its appeal was that it could be worked in front of the company. A modern vacuum brewer is the closest substitute.
- NeufchatelThe American neufchatel of 1900 is a soft, fresh cow's-milk cheese, essentially cream cheese with less butterfat, not the bloomy-rinded Normandy cheese of the same name. Supermarket neufchatel or plain cream cheese is the intended thing.
- Red pepperIn American books of this date red pepper means cayenne, not paprika and not sweet peppers. A dash is about an eighth of a teaspoon for a standard 8 oz package of cheese.
- The spread, in workable proportionsThe original gives none. For 8 oz of neufchatel, work in about 1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans, a teaspoon of olive oil to loosen it, and cayenne to taste. Let it sit at room temperature for twenty minutes before spreading or it will tear the wafers.
- Water wafersA thin, hard, unsweetened cracker made with little or no fat: what a British reader would call a water biscuit. Any plain unsalted or lightly salted cracker stands in.
- ServingFigure one demitasse and three or four spread wafers per person. The entry allows for the coffee to be made either at table or in the library, and notes how pleasant it is to serve in the living room or library.
After-dinner coffee as a separate, stronger, smaller service belongs to the late nineteenth-century American adoption of French and Viennese table habits: the demitasse, the black coffee taken standing or in another room, the deliberate break between dinner and the rest of the evening. The Vienna pot named here is a vacuum brewer, a design that circulated widely in Europe and America through the second half of the century. The cheese wafer is the more telling detail. Neufchatel had been made commercially in New York State since the 1870s, and by 1900 soft fresh cheese was cheap and available enough that a household book could treat it as a pantry staple to be seasoned and spread rather than an occasional luxury. The dash of cayenne and the olive oil mark this as a savoury close to the meal, in the English fashion of ending with something sharp rather than sweet.