A world full of coffee shops flooded with milk. Where there are only blonde, medium and dark roasts, the dairy selection boasts cow milk, soy milk, almond milk, cashew milk, oat milk, hemp milk, and coconut milk. Where coffee can be prepared as a pour over, espresso, in the pot, or cold brew, milk comes steamed and frothed, creamy or powdered, condensed in a can (if you’re Vietnamese) or curdled into cheese (if you’re Swedish), and even churned into butter. Our coffee is drowning in dairy.
Drowning indeed, so let the coffee get its revenge. In the great Italian tradition of la vendetta one unsuspecting café offering turns the tables: the affogato. An icon of the gleaming, steam-punk age of espresso behemoths, the name literally translated as ‘drowned.’ This time, the dairy drowns in the coffee.
Simply put, the affogato is a scoop of ice cream, gelado, or fior di latte (a simple cheese made from fresh milk), assaulted by a hot and bitter pour of espresso. Some serve it with a swirl of amaretto while others make it more youthful by subbing the coffee for hot chocolate. More traditionally, a swallow of strong grappa is mixed in as a version of an espresso correto with the addition of ice cream.
The affogato is best served with little ceremony–honoring its two ingredients without distracting from the point–-the contrast within the drink before you. A drinkable pun on the term bittersweet. A dichotomy between hot and cold. The states of matter clashing in liquid and solid. The yin and the yang of vanilla and coffee. A dietician’s qualm between drink and dessert. Your daily cup of coffee is transformed with a scoop of ice cream.
And after the meal, the waiter asks, “Any coffee or dessert?” Someone orders both and the waiter makes a delicious blunder. Espresso drools from some shining stainless steel tower that must have come from Italy during times of historical migration. A plop of ice cream dragged from a display cooler with a belly of curved glass and chrome detailing. In a mug, any old mug, the two duel it out.
The heat of the fresh espresso nearly sublimates the ice cream into an airy, white foam. The cool core of the scoop dissipates the coffee’s scald. Each bitter molecule donning a sweet jacket to insulate itself from the insulting cold. The creamy dairy runs out in miniscule deltas of muddy milk. Black and white, hot and cold, bitter and sweet vying for supremacy as you sip and spoon ambiguous states of matter into your hungry mouth. After a bit, homogeneity. A room temperature beige drink with something reminiscent of the fluff of ice cream and the bite of espresso.
Coffee taken with milk and sugar is not so different from coffee taken with ice cream. The difference is the drama present in the affogato which elevates it from the mundane cup of joe.
From the 1880s until 1913, Americans were buying alcohol in the mail in states where the sale of alcohol was prohibited. Liquor dealers advertised in newspapers or sent around circulars advertising their wares. They shipped the out-of-state hooch on the rails. Students and others were recruited to work for commissions of 50¢ per gallon and $1.50 per case when they delivered the alcohol.
Albany, New York was once the brewing capital of America. In the early 1800s, a libel law suit brought this brewing industry into the public eye. The threads of brewing, temperance, and food sanitation collided, but the brewers got the short end of the stick. Nevertheless, the case was an early example of public advocacy for food safety.
The pokal is a piece of occasional glassware. While we may discredit it as just a glass for pilsners today, this variety of cup was traditionally used for communal drinking. Besides drinking, this cup was repurposed as a trophy, particularly in the DFB-Pokal football tournament. The pokal exhibits cultural attributes of both community and competition.
Guatemalans make a sort of limeade out of salt, limes, and soda water. Interestingly, Argentines have used the same term to refer to a kind of yerba mate. The word comes from the earliest years of Conquest in Latin America, and once referred to escaped slaves.
