Irish Coffee

The story is that Irish coffee was invented in the early 1940s in County Limerick, Ireland.

 

Use a tall type glass (capable of holding hot beverages), you can adjust the amount of the ingredients according to the size glass you use. Ideally you would make a pot of coffee of some 32 ounces, and whip 8 ounces of cream,* then dispense the coffee according to the glasses, cups or mugs you use. Add the brown sugar to taste; likewise, with the Irish whiskey, and top off with whipped cream.

 

Ingredients (per serving):

 

6 to 8 ounces strong, hot black coffee

1 or 2 teaspoons brown sugar (your preference for sweetness)

2 ounces Irish whiskey (Jameson and Bushmills are best known, but there are others)

2 ounces whipped cream (preferably freshly whipped)

Brew the coffee in your preferred way (boiled, automatic drip, French press, etc). Add the brown sugar and the Irish whiskey to the glass and then pour in the hot coffee. Stir to dissolve the sugar and to mix. Top the coffee with whipped cream.

* You can whip the cream with an ounce of Irish cream (Bailey's is the best known). Irish cream is a mixture of sweetened cream, whiskey, chocolate and sometimes vanilla. The alcohol content is typically below 20%. 

 

WORD HISTORY:

Clock-This word is closely related to "cloak," a Latin-derived word (the basis of which came from Celtic) borrowed by English via Latin-based Old Northern French. The ultimate origin of "clock" is unknown, and even its later history is uncertain as to specifics. The idea has been that Irish monks ministering to the various Germanic tribes introduced the word into Germanic from Old Irish "cloc(c)," which meant "bell," and by extension, "a bell used to signal measurements of time." Old Irish was a Celtic language, and Welsh and Manx (from the Isle of Man), both also Celtic, had similar words, but whether this points to a Celtic derivation is uncertain. I've seen speculation that the word might have been borrowed by these Celtic languages from Latin; after all, it was monks who introduced the word to Germanic (it's certainly also possible that Latin got the term from Celtic). Anyway, Latin had the word "clocca," meaning "bell." Old English had "clucge," also meaning "bell," presumably from Latin, but why not from one of the Celtic languages like Welsh? "Clucge" died out by the second half of the 1300s and was replaced by, or at least altered to "clokke" by influence of Dutch "clocke," which meant a "time piece, a device used to measure time." Dutch had gotten this from Old Northern French "cloque," which had it from Latin "clocca." German also borrowed the word, but in German it is spelled "Glocke," and it still means "bell;" thus also, "Glockenspiel."^ The German borrowing seems to have come from the Irish monks (missionaries), but then later reinforced by Latin. The modern Dutch form is "klok," Low German has "klock," West Frisian has "klok." Old Norse got the term from Low German and today Icelandic has "klukka," Norwegian has "klokke," Danish has "klokke" and Swedish has "klocka." 

^ Generally, "Glockenspiel" is translated into English as "chime(s)," but it also means the instrument used to produce these ringing sounds, termed a xylophone in English, but the German Glockenspiel has a higher range of sounds, as they are made out of metal only, while xylophones are made of wood.