A brief history of froth
As the temperatures remain high, musings on the background of that favourite of thirst quenchers, the frapp?
The year is 1957, a year as fateful for millions of Greeks as 399 BC, when the weeping Phedrus could not persuade Socrates to abscond from his cell by cover of night to dissident-friendly Sparta. Or 1821, a bad year for Turks. Or 1940, when the Greek-coffee-sipping dictator Metaxas said “No!” to the espresso-sipping dictator Mussolini. Because this was the year when Yiannis Dritsas was sent to Thessaloniki on a mission for Nestl? to convince the children of Greece to drink chocolate milk. Actually, not just chocolate milk, but shaken chocolate milk. And possibly Dritsas would have sunk into obscurity long ago (in fact, Dritsas did sink into obscurity long ago) if one of his employees, a man named Vakondios, had been able to find hot water for his instant coffee.
As it turns out, he didn’t and used cold water instead. What must have gone through the young Vakondios’ mind? Had he realised the implications both for Greece and for Nestl?, which is the only instant coffee used by purists? For some reason, a shaker was also used, and the frapp? was invented. Perhaps Vakondios spoke French, because the name he gave to his new concoction was a French one meaning “struck”, “whipped”, or possibly “chilled”. Again, one can only thank Vakondios, or possibly Dritsas, the shadowy presence, for choosing the French. Otherwise, millions of Greeks, and now Bulgarians, Romanians, Thai and Malaysians (see below), would be drinking something called a “chtypito”.
Pace Vakondios and Nestl?, other aetiologies have been proposed for the beverage which became not only Greece’s “national drink”, but possibly her only significant 20th century contribution to Western, and now Eastern, civilization. Here is one.
It is whispered by some heretics that it was not a stroke of genius at all, but the desperation of thirsty construction workers trying to keep cool in the summers. The foam, the workers discovered, would keep out debris and perhaps many other things, and it would also keep their instant coffee relatively cool when ice was added.
Of course, it is equally plausible that there is an octogenarian barista somewhere in Rhodes, or Crete, who also claims to have invented the frapp?. He is probably famous in his village. Though, despite the divergent theories, it does seem relatively clear that this is, for once, not a word, beverage or edible, borrowed from the Turkish. Which brings us back to the critical word, frapp?. Here is something else to consider.
Force de frappe, the bombastic, and thankfully obsolete, term for France’s triple-pronged naval, land and air-based nuclear forces. Did the French have naval forces? Nuclear forces? This was an idea concocted at about the same time as Vakondios’ revolutionary beverage, and reminds us again to offer thanks to Vakondios, who might, had he maintained pro-German sympathies, have called his drink the blitzkrieg. Or in Charles De Gaulle’s own words, a macabre prefiguring of the bumbling declarations of another ‘strike-first-ask-questions-later’ military mind (of the early 21st century): “Within ten years we shall have whatever is necessary to kill 80 million Russians. Well, I believe one does not light-heartedly attack people who are able to kill 80 million Russians, even if one can kill 800 million French. That is, if there were 800 million French.” Good point, Charles! Would you like a frapp??
But the history of the frapp? is neither an exclusively national, nor Hellenic, one. It is not even a military one, though De Gaulle, I hear, was oddly a fan of instant coffee and might have known Vakondios. But I don’t mean France. I mean the US. Apparently, they have been drinking frapp?s (though without the French accent) in New England since the 1930s. In fact, according to one demented list of US ice cream-related holidays, October 7th is National Frappe Day. And what does that sound like? Without the accent?
In Rhode Island particularly, which in 1993 with “loud and passionate” debate in the state legislature declared Coffee Milk the “The Official State Drink,” they drink something like a frapp?, but much more horrible-sounding. This is made from a coffee syrup marketed in the 30s and 40s by companies with names like Silmo and Autocrat. If you add ice cream (and why wouldn’t you if you are drinking coffee syrup?), you have what Rhode Islanders call a “Coffee Cabinet”, which, according to one source, and surely the same one that declared October 7th National Frappe Day, is “a local term for a frapp?.”
Or consider Perley Waltz, another Rhode Islander, who opened his first pharmacy in Damariscotta in 1948, which is still nine years before Vakondios couldn’t find his hot water in Thessaloniki. It was apparently hot enough on those Damariscotta Main Street summers and thirsts “could be quenched with a large frothy ice cream soda, or a thick chocolaty frappe from Waltz’s soda fountain, to be shared with someone special or purely indulged alone.” Maybe not Makariou or Plaka, but close enough.
Moreover, in New Orleans they have been drinking something called the “absinthe frapp?” since 1846, when Messrs. Jacinto and Aleix opened what would become the Old Absinthe House, but which was originally called Aleix’s Coffee House. What are the chances that Monsieur Aleix did not experiment on coffee first? There is even a song about the absinthe frapp?. “At the first cool sip on your fevered lip/You determine to live through the day/Life’s again worthwhile as with a dawning smile/You imbibe your absinthe frapp?.”
A half a century later, frapp?, the word, would be au courant enough for the Trimalchio of Astor Place, Samuel Ward McAllister, to admonish upstart Chicago society hostesses to hire French chefs and “not frapp? their wine too much.” The response to this, from the Chicago Tribune, was: “The mayor will not frapp? his wine too much. He will frapp? it just enough so the guests can blow the foam off the tops of the glasses without a vulgar exhibition of lung and lip power. His ham sandwiches, sinkers, and … pigs’ feet, will be triumphs of the gastronomic art.” McAllister also had Rhode Island connections, which may mean that he had tasted a Coffee Cabinet once in his life, or at the very least, Silmo’s coffee syrup. Neither of which were likely responsible for his death, two years later, alone at a table in Manhattan’s Union Club.
All of which suggests that something inexplicable and horrible happens to Europeans once they set foot on American soil, and in several generations they are concocting drinks to survive the summer heat almost as revolting as Vakondios’. Or at least the Americans publish their reminiscences more readily and gleefully than Europeans. It is also possible that Vakondios has a website of his own on which “The day I couldn’t find hot water for my instant coffee,” is one entry among many detailing beloved, frapp?-related lore, though this is doubtful when you consider that they do not even celebrate National Frapp? Day in Greece.
In fact, as far as Greek insights into their “national drink” are concerned I found neither jingles nor soda fountains. I found directions instead. Things like, “Place one tsp of Instant Coffee in the water (you can add more coffee if you desire a stronger Frapp?).” This was the advice of Planet Greece. Thank you, Planet Greece! Can I add more water if I desire a weaker frapp??
And here is something from the resident Wikipedia frapp? scholar. The procedure in question is the mixing of the frapp?, technically known as “the agitation process.” The danger of sub-standard foam is clearly expressed in the following. “At this point the presence of oil (a hydrophobic agent) can significantly accelerate the collapsing process, resulting in the creation of a light
er foam with average bubble diameter larger than 4 mm.” Incidentally, an acceptable foam has “a thickness of about 1.5 to 2 inches (30 to 50 mm).”
Finally, and completely irrelevant, but worth mentioning if only to include in this discussion, our friends, the Canadians, who like to be included from time to time, is a line from a Canadian review of Peppermint Frapp?, a Carlos Saura film, found on the IMDB movie database: “Consider the long, breath-taking seduction scene of the radiologist, the nurse and the rowing machine.” I have and I’m still not thirsty.
Which finally brings us back to Greece, and her contribution to 20th century civilization. I mean the Bulgarian frapp?, of course, mentioned above in the context of cultural cross-fertilization. Specifically, I mean Bulgaria’s answer to the frapp?, which is whipped Coca-Cola, and which far surpasses in sheer repulsiveness anything they are likely doing in Bangkok or Bucharest, where they are drinking frapp?s now too, thanks again to Greece’s hero, Vakondios.
Incidentally, several eminent Greek historians at the University of Athens, currently on strike and unavailable for comment, have suggested that in addition to the frapp?, Greeks brought the concept of the front porch, the toe raise, the late afternoon nap and the double-cheek kiss, as well as electricity, the wheel and the assembly line (originally an idea of Thales, stolen by Ford) to the Balkans. They also claimed that lemons are Greek, to which the Bulgarians responded that Alexander of Macedon was a Jew.
The fact is that Nestl? is not the answer to summer thirst. I’m surely not the first to suggest this. Nor Coca-Cola. And I won’t even speak of the Czechs, who actually mix Coca-Cola with their wine. What I will suggest is that next time you are sitting at a caf? on a hot summer day, you order a beer, with which the Czechs more than redeem themselves for the terrifying Cola-Cola-and-wine “bombus.”
Or even better, try any of the recipes you will find in Venedict Yerofeev’s masterpiece, Moscow Stations, a.k.a. Moscow to the End of the Line. Yerofeev was the real thing. He was always thirsty and was a greater a pioneer than Vakondios in more ways than one. He was known to drink expensive perfume, for instance. Here is my favourite, the Spirit of Geneva: 50g White Lilac toilet water, 50g sock deodoriser, 200g Zhighuli beer and 150g spirit varnish. Shake well and enjoy!
