Little Rhody Box Co.

Recipes & Lore • The State Drink

Coffee Milk, the Right Way

Coffee milk is cold milk stirred with sweetened coffee syrup — not iced coffee, not a latte, and absolutely not coffee-flavored milk from a carton. It has been the official state drink of Rhode Island since July 29, 1993, when the General Assembly voted it in over Del's frozen lemonade after genuinely passionate debate. Rhode Island children are raised on it; Rhode Island adults never see a reason to stop.

A tall glass of milky coffee.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

You need

Method

  1. Pour the milk into a glass.
  2. Add 2 tablespoons of syrup.
  3. Stir like you mean it. The test of a properly made coffee milk is no ribbon of syrup left at the bottom of the glass.
  4. Taste, then adjust toward 3 tablespoons according to your conscience.

The upgrade: the coffee cabinet

Blend 1 cup of milk, 3 tablespoons of coffee syrup, and two generous scoops of coffee ice cream. Everywhere else in America this is a milkshake or a frappe; in Rhode Island it is a cabinet — named, the local explanation goes, for the cabinet where the blender lived. Order a "coffee cabinet" outside southern New England and enjoy the confusion.

The lore: the syrup tradition goes back to Rhode Island's Italian immigrant kitchens and drugstore soda fountains of the late 1800s. Two names fought for the state's fridge doors for generations — Autocrat (founded 1895, "A Swallow Will Tell You") and Eclipse (founded 1914) — until Autocrat acquired Eclipse in 1991 and kept bottling both labels in Lincoln, RI, because Rhode Islanders inherit their syrup loyalty and would absolutely notice.

Sources & further reading

Or skip the hunt

Real Rhode Island coffee syrup is the one ingredient your supermarket probably doesn't carry. Ours ships factory-sealed in the Coffee Milk Breakfast Kit — with the how-to card, the johnnycake mix, and the rest of a proper Rhody morning.

See the Kit — $59