The appearance of the first Irish coffee only happened in 1943.The drink is attributed to a man called Joe Sheridan, a barman working at the airport terminal restaurant in Foynes. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Foynes Airport in Ireland served as the hub for the flying boat, which traveled between the United States and Europe.
In order to get to the terminal, passengers had to take a boat trip that often they chilled to the bone in the cold, North Atlantic winter.
Joe Sheridan head chef at the airport, rewarded travelers who found themselves in Foynes with Irish whiskey topped with coffee.
He then made a few improvements. He added sugar then milk which promptly sank, So he whipped up some cream and floated that on top.
In the early 1950sm San Francisco Chronicle journalist Stanton Delaplane, who enjoyed the concoction so much that he brought the recipe back to Jack Koeppler, bartender at the Buena Vista Hotel in San Francisco.
Koeppler and Delaplane tried to recreate the drink but the whipped cream kept sinking to the bottom.
Koeppler eventually visited Sheridan in Ireland and learned the secret of floating the cream.
The drink is a mix of coffee, sugar and Irish whiskey, over which is poured a tablespoon of double cream. Added properly, the cream floats on top of the coffee.
Irish coffee became a staple after-dinner drink in the United States in the 1950s. Its popularity peaked in the 1970s, when seemingly endless variations using sweeter liqueurs came into vogue.
History behind Irish coffee
