Pharisaer

Why this works

The thick cream cap is functional, and the story explains the function. Alcohol and many of rum's aromatic compounds are volatile and rise off hot coffee as you lift the cup, which is how you can smell rum in a drink from across a table. A firm, unbroken layer of whipped cream traps them under the surface. You only taste the rum when the coffee reaches your mouth through the cream. That is why the cream is whipped a little firmer than for a Viennese coffee: it has to seal the cup, not just float on it.

Sugar does the same work as in any spiked coffee. It softens the alcohol's sharpness and rounds off the coffee's bitterness. Dark rum suits the strong filter coffee North Frisians drink, its molasses and caramel notes meeting the roast.

The coffee is filter rather than espresso because this is a North German farmhouse drink, made with whatever was in the pot, and it needs to be brewed strong so that the rum and the cream do not swamp it.

The story comes from Nordstrand, an island off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, in the nineteenth century. At a christening, the locals wanted to drink rum but the pastor disapproved, so they hid it in their coffee under cream. The pastor, served a plain coffee, eventually tasted one of theirs by mistake and is said to have cried out: you Pharisees! The drink has had the name ever since. Like most stories of its kind it is told with variations, but it is told everywhere in North Frisia.

Variations

• Tote Tante: hot chocolate with rum under whipped cream, the Frisian cousin.
• Lumumba: cocoa with rum or brandy, a related German winter drink.
• With espresso: a double espresso lengthened with hot water if you have no filter coffee.
• Less rum: 20 ml, which still counts but is less of an event.