Mazagran

Why this works

Lemon and coffee should clash, because coffee already has its own acidity and adding more usually makes a cup taste sour. Sugar is what resolves it. Sweetness suppresses the perception of both sourness and bitterness, so with enough of it the drink becomes a balance of three tastes rather than a battle of two, which is exactly how a good lemonade or a sour cocktail works. Without sugar, mazagran is genuinely unpleasant.

The peel matters more than the juice. Lemon peel holds limonene and other aromatic oils that smell bright and fresh without adding any acid. Twisting it over the glass sprays them onto the ice, so the drink smells strongly of lemon while tasting only lightly sour. The white pith beneath is bitter, which is why the strip should be cut thin.

The ice is part of the balance too. Cold dulls sweetness more than it dulls sourness, so a mazagran that tastes perfect warm will taste too sharp once iced. Sweeten a little more than seems right.

The story attached to the name is French and Algerian. In 1840, during France's colonial war in Algeria, a small French garrison was besieged in the fort at Mazagran. Accounts say the soldiers drank cold coffee sweetened and sometimes cut with water or brandy, and that veterans brought the habit back to Paris, where cafés served it as a café mazagran. How much of that is true is hard to establish. The drink survives most clearly in Portugal, where the name stuck to coffee over ice with lemon, and where you can still order one in Lisbon.

Variations

• With rum: 20 ml of light rum with the lemon juice, the Portuguese café cocktail version.
• With soda: top with 60 ml of sparkling water for a longer, lighter drink, close to a coffee lemonade.
• With mint: a few leaves bruised in the glass.
• Hot mazagran: the coffee served hot in a tall glass with lemon peel and sugar, which is how some French cafés did it.