My aunt drank a cup of instant coffee every morning. She was always running late for work. She’d pour some coffee in a saucer and it would cool enough to drink. Of course, this was at home and not in a restaurant.
She drank instant because my uncle didn’t drink coffee. She felt it wasn’t worth making a pot. She only had time to drink one cup. Getting up 15 minutes earlier wasn’t an option for her.
I’ve never seen anyone else cool a hot drink in a saucer. Have you?
Never saw anyone do it, but it was apparently a common enough practice that it was used a metaphor to describe the Senate Boston 1775: Searching for the “Senatorial Saucer” Source (yes, the story about this description being used by Washington is probably false - but even so, it was a metaphor that people in the 1870s were expected to understand).
My great great granduncle used to drink it that way. His dad (my GGG grandfather) was a Union civil war vet. Uncle George would do the full ‘saucer & blow’ maneuver. He would offer some to me (age 7 at the time) after it was ‘saucered and blowed’ but I declined.
One of my early cartoon memories was a “Milton the Monster” short called The Flying Cup and Saucer, in which our good-natured, but rather naive Milton serves serves coffee to monsters who have arrived in a flying cup and a flying saucer. He gets the coffee mixed up and serves it in a saucer to the cup monster, and in a cup to the saucer monster. Skip to about 5:15 for the relevant scene.
Lots of old-timers drank coffee after pouring it into a saucer. Probably because in olden times coffee was made in a pot on the stove so it was boiling when you poured it & needed cooling.
All the saucers I’ve ever seen back then and lately are concave, and you can certainly drink from them. Can you point us towards an image of these flat modern saucers of which you write?
In the 60s my grandparents did this. It didn’t seem strange at the time, but now I’m experiencing some kind of double exposure where it seems weird to me now, but I can recall when it didn’t.
I read somewhere that this is or used to be the usual procedure with tea in Russia. Sweetened with jam instead of sugar. Seems samowars are really hot too. I only forgot where I read it.
Bolding mine. Qagdop you used the same term that a friend had used. In the 2000s he was in his 90s and he said during the Depression you’d drink your coffee at a diner saucered and blowed. He passed away long ago, but I remember that he used that exact phrasing.
My Uncle George was in his 90’s when he said that to me in the early 1960’s. It’s a privilege to recall my time with him and Aunt Nettie, in their house without electricity, plumbing (other than a hand pump in the kitchen sink), with heat and light supplied by a wood stove and kerosene lamps. Outhouse was out back. I remember laughter, music from the wind-up victrola, board games and cards and good food and saucered and blowed coffee and tea.