The stunning Mrs. Clark’s grandfather Donald was the child of a Northern Pacific railroad man, and drank his coffee “caboose style.” Over his entire life, he brought water to boil in a pan then dumped in his coffee grounds – no filters or percolators. After a few more minutes of boiling he dumped the whole mix into this coffee cup. Pitch black. Sherry remembers vividly how there would be a layer of coffee grounds at the bottom of his cup. Donald died in 1984, so the recipe for his coffee is long gone. In the past I had seen references to coffee being prepared on the caboose of a train, and the description sounded like Donald’s concoction. So I searched the Internet to locate something similar, but only came up with mixes like “one gallon water, one pound coffee, and one horseshoe – boil until shoe floats.” Might be a joke, but I can never tell. Important things like coffee/water ratio and cooking time were still a mystery. And I don’t have a horseshoe. Since the Intertubes were producing no valid search results, I decided to recreate Donald’s recipe myself. I started with the same ratios that I use in my percolater: water for 9 cups and 5 scoops of preground coffee. I brought the water to boil then dumped in the grounds. The coffee was boiled over medium heat for about 8 minutes, stirring twice. Initially the mixture created a dark foam on the top while boiling. That went away after a couple minutes. While it cooked I dipped a spoon in to check the color; when it finally got to the desire darkness I took the pot off the heat and grabbed a ladle for pouring into my cup. This minimized the amount of grounds that layer the bottom. So how did it taste? Strong as suspected! This stuff is strong enough to wake my unborn grandchildren. It was a little bitter, but had an unusual smoothness after the initial sip. The experience was similar in consistency and taste to the drip coffee I make when camping. The grounds in the bottom of the cup are very fine, as if the boiling made them smaller. Future attempts will use a shorter boil time and maybe – gasp – a single creamer once the coffee is ladled into my cup. While I can only mimic Donald’s recipe using estimations, I can say one thing with absolute certainty: I bet he stayed awake!
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:58:08 +0000
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