Spiked North German Coffee: Pharisäer

As the story goes, this drink started circa 1870 as a way for some Lutheran parishioners on one of the North Frisian islands to fool their devout, anti-alcohol pastor. North Frisia, "Nordfriesland," in standard German, is located on the eastern edge of the North Sea, just below the border with Denmark.* The region is battered by the winds and the waves from the North Sea, making alcoholic beverages a part of life for the people there, as they try to take the chill off of the often windy, damp weather. The pastor fervently tried to reform his alcohol drinking flock, holding regular religious meetings in a pub, where only coffee would be served to attendees. To get around the "coffee only" meetings, the men of this North Frisian island added rum to their coffee, then topped the cup with whipped cream to hold down the smell of the rum from the pastor's nose. At some point, the pastor got a whiff of the rum and shouted, "Ihr Pharisäer!" ("You Pharisees!") This biblical reference gave the name to the drink, "Pharisäer." (Pronounced as if, "far-ee-zay-ah")

Ingredients (per cup):

6 oz. strong hot coffee
3/4 oz. rum
1 tablespoon sugar, or to taste
whipped cream

Pour the coffee into a cup, add the sugar and stir, then add the rum. Top with a thick layer of whipped cream. (The amount of sugar can be adjusted as you like.)

* The boundaries of what has been called "North Frisia" have changed somewhat into modern times, although the basic area is the same. North Frisian, a dialect of a general Frisian language, another West Germanic language, has a long history in the region, but Low German Saxon has also been present in the general area going well back in history, and it gradually lessened the number of North Frisian speakers, although a number of North Frisians speak both North Frisian and Low German. In modern times, standard German, based upon High German dialect (technically, "middle high"), has been taught in schools and is spoken and understood by everyone, so many North Frisians are, therefore, tri-lingual, and some few even speak a fourth language, Danish, or Danish dialect. The overall Frisian language is often mentioned as the closest living language to English, with Low German also being very close, but this is not all that surprising, as Frisian, more especially the North and East Frisian dialects, and Low German Saxon, occupy the area of the ancestral homeland of English, the land of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (see note below). The Angles seem to have totally picked up and sailed to Britain, along with a large contingent, but not all, Saxons and Jutes, and also many Frisians, where these Germanic people founded England, and where their dialects melded into English. (NOTE: The Jutes have long been seen as a distinct Germanic tribe, but some historians have thought them to be a part of a broader "Saxon" Germanic tribe, or at least affiliated with a Saxon-led confederation of Germanic tribes.)

WORD HISTORY:
North-This word, for one of the directions of the compass, "likely" goes back to Indo European "ner/nert," which meant "left." This then gave Old Germanic "nurtha," meaning "north," with the idea being that when facing the rising sun to the east, north is the direction to the left. This gave Old English "norþ," with essentially the "þ" symbol being the modern equivalent of "(e)th," and indeed, as English and the other Germanic languages adopted the Latin alphabet, the spelling became "north." The other Germanic languages have: German "Nord," Low German Saxon "Noord," West Frisian "noard," Dutch "noord," Danish and Norwegian "nord," Swedish "norr," and Icelandic "norður" (equivalent to "northur"). A special note, Old French borrowed the word from English as "north" (modern French "nord"), and Italian (nord), Rumanian (nord), Spanish (norte) and Portuguese (norte) all borrowed their forms from French, making English the common source.