Origin
[/img]
[/img]
[/img]
The original Irish coffee was invented by Joseph Sheridan, a head chef at Foynes, County Limerick. May God bless him.
Foynes' port was the precursor to Shannon International Airport in the west of Ireland; the coffee was conceived after a group of American passengers disembarked at the airport on a miserable winter evening in the 1940s. Sheridan decided to add some whiskey to the coffee to warm the passengers. After being asked if they were being served Brazilian coffee, Sheridan told the passengers that it was Irish coffee[1].
Stanton Delaplane, travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, claimed to have brought Irish coffee to the United States when he convinced the Buena Vista bar in San Francisco to start serving Irish coffee on November 10, 1952.[1]
However, since around or before that date the beverage has been served at Tom Bergin's Tavern in Los Angeles, where a large sign reading "House of Irish Coffee" has been in place since the early 1950s.[2]
[edit]Preparation
A mug of Baileys coffee
Black coffee is poured into the mug;
Whiskey and at least one level teaspoon of sugar is stirred in until fully dissolved. The sugar is essential for floating liquid cream on top.[3]
Thick cream is carefully poured over the back of a spoon initially held just above the surface of the coffee and gradually raised a little. The layer of cream will float on the coffee without mixing. The coffee is drunk through the layer of cream.
[edit]Variations
Whipped cream rather than thick liquid cream is sometimes used, although contrary to the original recipe; it is easier to drop a dollop of whipped cream in or even spray it from a can than to float liquid cream, and it will float even if the coffee is made without sugar. The experience of drinking the coffee through the floating cream is lost.
In Spain a "Café Irlandés" ("Irish Coffee") is sometimes served with a bottom layer of whiskey, a separate coffee layer, and a layer of cream on top[2]. Special devices are sold for making Café Irlandés.
Variants of Irish coffee are made, all essentially the same but with different names and using a different spirit. This list will never be hard and fast, as any bar can serve such a drink and call it by any name they choose.
Scotch or Gaelic coffee; using Scotch whisky
Bonnie Prince Charlie coffee; using Drambuie
Kentucky coffee with Bourbon whiskey
French coffee; using brandy or cognac
Calypso or Caribbean or Jamaican coffee; using dark rum or sometimes, Tia Maria
Russian coffee; using vodka
Mexican coffee; using tequila
Hasselt coffee; using jenever
Kahlua coffee with Kahlua coffee liqueur
Baileys coffee with Baileys Irish Cream
Spanish coffee; using sherry
Butte, MT version: coffee, Irish Cream, Irish Whiskey. Catholic of course.
and many others
The cocktail known as "Dutch coffee" is hot black coffee with sugar and advocaat stirred in.
A small cup of strong coffee is sometimes drunk with a shot of alcoholic spirits (brandy, grappa, marc) and without cream or milk, but these are quite different from Irish coffee.
Thick cream can be floated on sweetened coffee without the addition of alcohol, instead of being stirred in.
[edit]
