All About Coffee Part 132

meaning the sugar bowl in the pantry.

Cheaper coffee is served in some gardens, which conspicuously display large signs at the entrance, saying: "Families may cook their own coffee in this place." In such a garden, the patron merely buys the hot water from the proprietor, furnishing the ground coffee and cake himself.

While waiting for the coffee to brew, he may listen to the band and watch the children play under the trees. French or Vienna drip pots are used for brewing.

Every city in Germany has its cafes, s.p.a.cious places where patrons sit around small tables, drinking coffee, "with or without" turned or unturned, steaming or iced, sweetened or unsweetened, depending on the sugar supply; nibble, at the same time, a piece of cake or pastry, selected from a gla.s.s pyramid; talk, flirt, malign, yawn, read, and smoke. Cafes are, in fact, public reading rooms. Some places keep hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers and magazines on file for the use of patrons. If the customer buys only one cup of coffee, he may keep his seat for hours, and read one newspaper after another.

Three of the four corners of Berlin's most important street crossing are occupied by cafes. This is where Unter den Linden and Friedrichstra.s.se meet. On the southwest corner there is Kranzler's staid old cafe, a very respectable place, where the lower hall is even reserved for non-smokers. On the southeast corner is Cafe Bauer, known the world over. However, it has seen better days. It has been outdistanced by compet.i.tors. On the northeast corner is the Victoria, a new-style place, very bright, and less staid. There no room is reserved for non-smokers, for most of the ladies, if they do not themselves smoke, will light the cigars for their escorts.

Around the Potsdamer Platz there is a number of cafes. Josty's is perhaps the most frequented in Berlin. It is the best liked on account of the trees and terraces in front. Farther to the west, on Kuerfuerstendamm, there are dozens of large cafes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MORNING COFFEE IN FRONT OF A BOULEVARD CAFe, PARIS, WITH A BRITISH BACKGROUND]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR, CAFe BAUER, BERLIN]

Some of the cafes are meeting-places for certain professions and trades.

The Admiral's cafe, in Friedrichstra.s.se, for instance, is the "artistes'" exchange. All the stage folk and stars of the tanbark meet there every day. Chorus girls, tumblers, ladies of the flying trapeze, contortionists, and bareback riders are to be found there, discussing their grievances, denouncing their managers, swapping their diamonds, and recounting former triumphs. Cinema-makers come also to pick out a cast for a new film play. There one can pick out a full cast every minute.

Then there is the Cafe des Westens in Kuerfuerstendamm, the old one, where dreamers and poets congregate. It is called also Cafe Groessenwahn, which means that persons suffering from an exaggerated ego are conspicuous by their presence and their long hair.

At almost every table one may find a poet who has written a play that is bound to enrich its author and any man of means who will put up the money to build a new theater in which to produce it.

Saxony and Thuringia are proverbial hotbeds of coffee lovers. It is said that in Saxony there are more coffee drinkers to the square inch and more cups to the single coffee bean than anywhere else upon earth. The Saxons like their coffee, but seem to be afraid it may be too strong for them. So, when over their cups, they always make certain they can see bottom before raising the steaming bowl to the lip.

Von Liebig's method of making coffee, whereby three-fourths of the quant.i.ty to be used is first boiled for ten or fifteen minutes, and the remainder added for a six-minute steeping or infusion, is religiously followed by some housekeepers. Von Liebig advocated coating the bean with sugar. In some families, fats, eggs, and egg-sh.e.l.ls are used to settle and to clarify the beverage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAFe BAUER, UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN]

Coffee in Germany is better cooked (roasted) and more scientifically prepared than in many other European countries. In recent years, during the World War and since, however, there has been an amazing increase in the use of coffee subst.i.tutes, so that the German cup of coffee is not the pure delight it was once.

GREECE. Coffee is the most popular and most extensively used non-alcoholic beverage in Greece, as it is throughout the Near East. Its annual per capita consumption there is about two pounds, two-thirds of the supply coming _via_ Austria and France, Brazil furnishing direct the bulk of the remaining third.

Coffee is given a high or city roast, and is used almost entirely in powdered form. It is prepared for consumption princ.i.p.ally in the Turkish demi-ta.s.se way. Finely ground coffee is used even in making ordinary table, or breakfast, coffee. In private houses the cylindrical bra.s.s hand-grinders, manufactured in Constantinople, are mostly used. In many of the coffee houses in the villages and country towns throughout Greece and the Levant, a heavy iron pestle, wielded by a strong man, is employed to pulverize the grains in a heavy stone or marble mortar; while the poorer homes use a small bra.s.s pestle and mortar, also manufactured in Turkey.

In his _The Greeks of the Present Day_[371], Edmond Francois Valentin About says:

The coffee which is drunk in all the Greek houses rather astonishes the travellers who have neither seen Turkey nor Algeria. One is surprised at finding food in a cup in which one expected drink. Yet you get accustomed to this coffee-broth and end by finding it more savoury, lighter, more perfumed, and especially more wholesome, than the extract of coffee you drink in France.

Then About gives the recipe of his servant Petros, who is "the first man in Athens for coffee":

The grain is roasted without burning it; it is reduced to an impalpable powder, either in a mortar or in a very close-grained mill. Water is set on the fire till it boils up; it is taken off to throw in a spoonful of coffee, and a spoonful of pounded sugar for each cup it is intended to make; it is carefully mixed; the coffee pot is replaced on the fire until the contents seem ready to boil over; it is taken off, and set on again; lastly it is quickly poured into the cups. Some coffee drinkers have this preparation boiled as many as five times. Petros makes a rule of not putting his coffee more than three times on the fire. He takes care in filling the cups to divide impartially the coloured froth which rises above the coffee pot; it is the _kaimaki_ of the coffee. A cup without _kaimaki_ is disgraced.

When the coffee is poured out you are at liberty to drink it boiling and muddy, or cold and clear. Real amateurs drink it without waiting. Those who allow the sediment to settle down, do not do so from contempt, for they afterwards collect it with the little finger and eat it carefully.

Thus prepared, coffee may be taken without inconvenience ten times a day: five cups of French coffee could not be drunk with impunity every day. It is because the coffee of the Turks and the Greeks is a diluted tonic, and ours is a concentrated tonic.

I have met at Paris many people who took their coffee without sugar, to imitate the Orientals. I think I ought to give them notice, between ourselves, that in the great coffee-houses of Athens, sugar is always presented with the coffee; in the khans and second-rate coffee-houses, it is served already sugared; and that at Smyrna and Constantinople, it has everywhere been brought to me sugared.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KRANZLER'S, UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN]

ITALY. In Italy coffee is roasted in a wholesale and retail way as well as in the home. French, German, Dutch, and Italian machines are used.

The full city, or Italian, roast is favored. There are cafes as in France and other continental countries, and the drink is prepared in the French fashion. For restaurants and hotels, rapid filtering machines, first developed by the French and Italians, are used. In the homes, percolators and filtration devices are employed.

The De Mattia Brothers have a process designed to conserve the aroma in roasting. The Italians pay particular attention to the temperature in roasting and in the cooling operation. There is considerable glazing, and many coffee additions are used.

Like the French, the Italians make much of _cafe au lait_ for breakfast.

At dinner, the _cafe noir_ is served.

Cafes of the French school are to be found along the Corso in Rome, the Toledo in Naples, in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuel and the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, and in the arcades surrounding the Piazza de San Marco in Venice, where Florian's still flourishes.

NETHERLANDS. In the Netherlands, too, the French cafe is a delightful feature of the life of the larger cities. The Dutch roast coffee properly, and make it well. The service is in individual pots, or in demi-ta.s.ses on a silver, nickle, or bra.s.s tray, and accompanied by a miniature pitcher containing just enough cream (usually whipped), a small dish about the size of an individual b.u.t.ter plate holding three squares of sugar, and a slender gla.s.s of water. This service is universal; the gla.s.s of water always goes with the coffee. It is the one sure way for Americans to get a drink of water. It is the custom in Holland to repair to some open-air cafe or indoor coffee house for the after-dinner cup of coffee. One seldom takes his coffee in the place where he has his dinner. These cafes are many, and some are elaborately designed and furnished. One of the most interesting is the St. Joris at the Hague, furnished in the old Dutch style. The approved way of making coffee in Holland is the French drip method.

NORWAY AND SWEDEN. French and German influences mark the roasting, grinding, preparing, and serving of coffee in Norway and Sweden.

Generally speaking, not so much chicory is used, and a great deal of whipped cream is employed. In Norway, the boiling method has many followers. A big (open) copper kettle is used. This is filled with water, and the coffee is dumped in and boiled. In the poorer-cla.s.s country homes, the copper kettle is brought to the table and set upon a wooden plate. The coffee is served directly from the kettle in cups. In better-cla.s.s homes, the coffee is poured from the kettle into silver coffee pots in the kitchen, and the silver coffee pots are brought to the table. The only thing approaching coffee houses are the "coffee rooms" which are to be found in Christiania. These are small one-room affairs in which the plainer sorts of foods, such as porridge, may be purchased with the coffee. They are cheap, and are largely frequented by the poorer cla.s.s of students, who use them as places in which to study while they drink their coffee.

In RUSSIA and SWITZERLAND, French and German methods obtain. Russia, however, drinks more tea than coffee, which by the ma.s.ses is prepared in Turkish fashion, when obtainable. Usually, the coffee is only a cheap "subst.i.tute." The so-called _cafe a la Russe_ of the aristocracy, is strong black coffee flavored with lemon. Another Russian recipe calls for the coffee to be placed in a large punch bowl, and covered with a layer of finely chopped apples and pears; then cognac is poured over the ma.s.s, and a match applied.

ROUMANIA and SERVIA drink coffee prepared after either the Turkish or the French style, depending on the cla.s.s of the drinker and where it is served. Subst.i.tutes are numerous.

In SPAIN and PORTUGAL the French type of cafe flourishes as in Italy. In Madrid, some delightful cafes are to be found around the Puerto del Sol, where coffee and chocolate are the favorite drinks. The coffee is made by the drip process, and is served in French fashion.

_Coffee Manners and Customs in North America_

The introduction of coffee and tea into North America effected a great change in the meal-time beverages of the people. Malt beverages had been succeeded by alcoholic spirits and by cider. These in turn were supplanted by tea and coffee.

CANADA. In Canada, we find both French and English influences at work in the preparation and serving of the beverage; "Yankee" ideas also have entered from across the border. Some years back (about 1910) A. McGill, chief chemist of the Canadian Inland Revenue Department, suggested an improvement upon Baron von Liebig's method, whereby Canadians might obtain an ideal cup of coffee. It was to combine two well-known methods.

One was to boil a quant.i.ty of ground coffee to get a maximum of body or soluble matter. The other was to percolate a similar quant.i.ty to get the needed caffeol. By combining the decoction and the infusion, a finished beverage rich in body and aroma might be had. Most Canadians continue to drink tea, however, although coffee consumption is increasing.

MEXICO. In Mexico, the natives have a custom peculiarly their own. The roasted beans are pounded to a powder in a cloth bag which is then immersed in a pot of boiling water and milk. The _vaquero_, however, pours boiling water on the powdered coffee in his drinking cup, and sweetens it with a brown sugar stick.

Among the upper cla.s.ses in Mexico the following interesting method obtains for making coffee:

Roast one pound until the beans are brown inside. Mix with the roasted coffee one teaspoonful of b.u.t.ter, one of sugar, and a little brandy. Cover with a thick cloth. Cool for one hour; then grind. Boil one quart of water. When boiling, put in the coffee and remove from fire immediately. Let it stand a few hours, and strain through a flannel bag, and keep in a stone jar until required for use; then heat quant.i.ty required.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIDEWALK CAFe, LISBON]

UNITED STATES. In no country has there been so marked an improvement in coffee making as in the United States. Although in many parts, the national beverage is still indifferently prepared, the progress made in recent years has been so great that the friends of coffee are hopeful that before long it may be said truly that coffee making in America is a national honor and no longer the national disgrace that it was in the past.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THESE COFFEE POTS ARE WIDELY USED IN SWEDEN FOR BOILING COFFEE

Left, copper pot with wooden handle and iron legs designed to stand in the coals--Center, gla.s.s-globe pot, for stove use, enclosed in felt-lined bra.s.s cosey--Right, hand-made hammered-bra.s.s kettle for stove use]

Already, in the more progressive homes, and in the best hotels and restaurants, the coffee is uniformly good, and the service all that it should be. The American breakfast cup is a food-beverage because of the additions of milk or cream and sugar; and unlike Europe, this same generous cup serves again as a necessary part of the noonday and evening meals for most people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COFFEE ROOM OF THE HOTEL ADOLPHUS, DALLAS, TEXAS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAY-AND-NIGHT COFFEE ROOM, RICE HOTEL, HOUSTON, TEXAS]