Tea at Trianon: The Improved Irish Coffee

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, January 28, 2012

The Improved Irish Coffee

From The Wall Street Journal:

The beauty of the Irish Coffee is threefold: part pick-me-up, part dessert, part winter warmer. Like any simple cocktail—it's nothing but coffee, Irish whiskey, cream and sugar—this drink is more than the sum of its parts. All too often it's made with too much whiskey, weak coffee and whipped cream from a can, which is unfair because...this classic is too good to dwell in mediocrity. (Read entire post.)

julygirl said...: My body finds the clash of the caffeine warring against the whiskey plus the sugar, a bit much, but delicious to the taste buds!; January 28, 2012 at 10:59:00 PM EST