Celebrate St Patrick’s Day with a glass of tipsy Irish coffee – a fine way to warm up after the parade.

Serves 2

4 tbsp Irish whiskey
1 oz / 25 g brown sugar
¾ pint / 400 ml hot, strong, black coffee
4 fl oz / 100 ml double cream

Divide the whiskey and sugar between two heatproof, long stemmed glasses. Pour in the coffee, filling the glasses to within 3 cms of the top. Carefully pour the cream over the back of a spoon onto the coffee so that it floats on top. Drink immediately, sipping the hot coffee through the cold cream.


The original Irish coffee was invented in the 1940s by Joseph Sheridan, a chef at the airport of Limerick. When a group of American passengers disembarked one cold, wet winter evening, Sheridan decided to add some Irish whiskey to their coffee to warm them up. They asked if they were drinking Brazilian coffee, but he told them that no, it was Irish coffee.

The recipe spread to America when on 10 November 1952 Stanton Delaplane, a travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, persuaded the Buena Vista bar in San Francisco to serve the drink. He and the owner of the bar experimented for hours trying to recreate the elixir served back at the Shannon Airport, but they could not achieve quite the right flavour – or make their cream float. The restaurateur even went to Ireland to visit the airport in his search for perfection.

Eventually, the perfect-tasting Irish whiskey was tracked down. San Francisco’s mayor, who was a prominent dairy owner, was appealed to over the matter of the sinking cream. He advised ageing the cream for 48 hours and frothing it lightly. The Buena Vista bar is still famous for its Irish coffee.

Whipping the cream will ensure that it floats. However, the delicious sensation of drinking the hot, strong coffee through the velvety, cold cream is lost. To make runny cream float, it is essential to add sugar to the coffee.