Tract · Cocktails

Non-alcoholic · Built in glass · Historical · complexity 1/5

Cafe Royal

Boothby's Cafe Royal is a flaming Chartreuse-sugar coffee service rather than a mixed cocktail proper.

coffee · sweet · herbal · after-dinner

Served in Cup.

Variants (2)

Cocktail Boothby's American Bar-Tender by Wm. T. Boothby (1891, p.27)

1 cupcoffee — black coffeebase
yellow chartreuse — Used to saturate the sugar.modifier
1 lumpsugar — sugar lumpsweetener
  1. Hold a teaspoon containing a sugar lump saturated with yellow Chartreuse over a cup of hot black coffee.
  2. Set the sugar aflame, let it burn until dissolved into the coffee, mix, and serve.

This is a good example of after-dinner theatrical service outside the formal cocktail families.

The drink is defined by flaming the liqueur-soaked sugar directly over the coffee.

The Complete Buffet Manual or How to Mix Fancy Drinks by J. E. Sheridan (1901, p.103) — Frapped

0.75 partblack coffee base
0.25 partbrandy base
  1. Frappe three-fourths black coffee and one-fourth brandy in a cooler.
  2. Drink while the mixture is yet in a semi-frozen state.

Ice: Frapped semi-frozen service

This keeps a frapped coffee-and-brandy after-dinner service visible alongside the hotter and more flamboyant cafe-royal traditions.

The semi-frozen texture is the whole point of the service and should not be flattened away.

See also: Cafe Royal, Bottled Velvet

Sheridan says the drink is very potent.