Page:The White House Cook Book.djvu/500

 460 COFFEE, TEA, BEVERAGES.

ICED COFFEE.

MAKE more coffee than usual at breakfast time and stronger. When cold put on ice. Serve with cracked ice in each tumbler.

SUBSTITUTE FOR CREAM IN COFFEE.

BEAT the white of an egg, put to it a small lump of butter and pour the coffee into it gradually, stirring it so that it will not curdle. It is difficult to distinguish this from fresh cream.

Many drop a tiny piece of sweet butter into their cup of hot cof- fee as a substitute for cream.

TO MAKE TEA.

ALLOW two teaspoonfuls of tea to one large cupful of boiling water. Scald the teapot, put in the tea, pour on about a cupful of boiling water, set it on the fire in a warm place, where it will not boil, but keep very hot, to almost boiling; let it steep or "draw" ten or twelve minutes. Now fill up with as much boiling water as is required. Send hot to the table. It is better to use a china or porcelain teapot, but if you do use metal let it be tin, new, bright and clean ; never use it when the tin is worn off and the iron exposed. If you do you are drinking tea-ate of iron.

To make tea to perfection, boiling water must be poured on the leaves directly it boils. Water which has been boiling more than five minutes, or which has previously boiled, should on no account be used. If the water does not boil, or if it be allowed to overboil, the leaves of the tea will be only half -opened and the tea itself will be quite spoiled. The water should be allowed to remain on the leaves from ten to fifteen minutes.

A Chinese being interviewed for the Cook says : Drink your tea plain. Don't add milk or sugar. Tea-brokers and tea-tasters never do; epicures never do; the Chinese never do. Milk contains fibrin, albumen or some other stuff, and the tea a delicate amount of tannin. Mixing the two makes the liquid turbid. This turbidity, if I remem- ber the cyclopaedia aright, is tannate of fibrin, or leather. People who put milk in tea are therefore drinking boots and shoes in mild disguise.

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