All About Coffee Part 134

Then the powdered coffee is added; and when the liquid comes again to a boil, the coffee is done. In the cities, practically the same method is followed. The general rule in the antipodes seems to be to "let it come to a boil", and then to remove it from the fire.

In CUBA the custom is to grind the coffee fine, to put it in a flannel sack suspended over a receiving vessel, and to pour cold water on it.

This is repeated many times, until the coffee ma.s.s is well saturated.

The first drippings are repoured over the bag. The final result is a highly concentrated extract, which serves for making _cafe au lait_, or _cafe noir_, as desired.

In MARTINIQUE, coffee is made after the French fashion. In PANAMA, French and American methods obtain; as also in the PHILIPPINES.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

PREPARATION OF THE UNIVERSAL BEVERAGE

_The evolution of grinding and brewing methods--Coffee was first a food, then a wine, a medicine, a devotional refreshment, a confection, and finally a beverage--Brewing by boiling, infusion, percolation, and filtration--Coffee making in Europe in the nineteenth century--Early coffee making in the United States--Latest developments in better coffee making--Various aspects of scientific coffee brewing--Advice to coffee lovers on how to buy coffee, and how to make it in perfection_

The coffee drink has had a curious evolution. It began, not as a drink, but as a food ration. Its first use as a drink was as a kind of wine.

Civilization knew it first as a medicine. At one stage of its development, before it became generally accepted as a liquid refreshment, the berries found favor as a confection. As a beverage, its use probably dates back about six hundred years.

The protein and fat content, that is, the food value, of coffee, so far as civilized man is concerned, is an absolute waste. The only const.i.tuents that are of value are those that are water soluble, and can be extracted readily with hot water. When coffee is properly made, as by the drip method, either by percolation or filtration, the ground coffee comes in contact with the hot water for only a few minutes; so the major portion of the protein, which is not only practically insoluble, but coagulates on heating, remains in the unused part of the coffee, the grounds. The coffee bean contains a large percent of protein--fourteen percent. By comparing this figure with twenty-one percent of protein in peas, twenty-three percent in lentils, twenty-six percent in beans, twenty-four percent in peanuts, about eleven percent in wheat flour, and less than nine percent in white bread, we learn how much of this valuable food stuff is lost with the coffee grounds[373].

Though civilized man (excepting the inhabitants of the Isle de Groix off the coast of Brittany) does not use this protein content of coffee, in certain parts of Africa it has been put to use in a very ingenious and effective manner "from time immemorial" down to the present day. James Bruce, the Scottish explorer, in his travels to discover the source of the Nile in 1768-73, found that this curious use of the coffee bean had been known for centuries. He brought back accounts and specimens of its use as a food in the shape of b.a.l.l.s made of grease mixed with roasted coffee finely ground between stones.

Other writers have told how the Galla, a wandering tribe of Africa--and like most wandering tribes, a warlike one--find it necessary to carry concentrated food on their long marches. Before starting on their marauding excursions, each warrior equips himself with a number of food b.a.l.l.s. These prototypes of the modern food tablet are about the size of a billiard ball, and consist of pulverized coffee held in shape with fat. One ball const.i.tutes a day's ration; and although civilized man might find it unpalatable, from the purely physiological standpoint it is not only a concentrated and efficient food, but it also has the additional advantage of containing a valuable stimulant in the caffein content which spurs the warrior on to maximum effort. And so the savage in the African jungle has apparently solved two problems; the utilization of coffee's protein, and the production of a concentrated food.

Further research shows that perhaps as early as 800 A.D. this practise started by crushing the whole ripe berries, beans and hulls, in mortars, mixing them with fats, and rounding them into food b.a.l.l.s. Later, the dried berries were so used. The inhabitants of Groix, also, thrive on a diet that includes roasted coffee beans.

About 900, a kind of aromatic wine was made in Africa from the fermented juice of the hulls and pulp of the ripe berries[374].

Payen says that the first coffee drinkers did not think of roasting but, impressed by the aroma of the dried beans, they put them in cold water and drank the liquor saturated with their aromatic principles. Crushing the raw beans and hulls, and steeping them in water, was a later improvement.

It appears that boiled coffee (the name is anathema today) was invented about the year 1000 A.D. Even then, the beans were not roasted. We read of their use in medicine in the form of a decoction. The dried fruit, beans and hulls, were boiled in stone or clay cauldrons. The custom of using the sun-dried hulls, without roasting, still exists in Africa, Arabia, and parts of southern Asia. The natives of Sumatra neglect the fruit of the coffee tree and use the leaves to make a tea-like infusion.

Jardin relates that in Guiana an agreeable tea is made by drying the young buds of the coffee tree, and rolling them on a copper plate slightly heated. In Uganda, the natives eat the raw berries; from bananas and coffee they make also a sweet, savory drink which is called _menghai_.

About 1200, the practise was common of making a decoction from the dried hulls alone. There followed the discovery that roasting improved the flavor. Even today, this drink known as Sultan or Sultana coffee, _cafe a la sultane_, or _kisher_, continues in favor in Arabia. Credit for the invention of this beverage has been wrongfully given by various French writers to Doctor Andry, director of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris.

Dr. Andry had his own recipe for making _cafe a la sultane_, which was to boil the coffee hulls for half an hour. This gave a lemon-colored liquid which was drunk with a little sugar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY COFFEE MAKING IN PERSIA

Showing leather bag for green beans, roasting plate, grinder, boiler, and serving cups]

The Oriental procedure was to toast the hulls in an earthenware pot over a charcoal fire, mixing in with them a small quant.i.ty of the silver skins, and turning them over until they were slightly parched. The hulls and silver skins, in proportions of four to one, were then thrown into boiling water and well boiled again for at least a half-hour. The color of the drink had some resemblance to the best English beer, La Roque a.s.sures us, and it required no sweetening, "there being no bitterness to correct." This was still the coffee drink of the court of Yemen, and of people of distinction in the Levant, when La Roque and his fellow-travelers made their celebrated voyage to Arabia the Happy in 1711-13.

Some time in the thirteenth century, the practise began of roasting the dried beans, after the hulling process. This was done first in crude stone and earthenware trays, and later on metal plates, as described in chapter x.x.xIV. A liquor was made from boiling the whole roasted beans.

The next step was to pound the roasted beans to a powder with a mortar and pestle; and the decoction was then made by throwing the powder into boiling water, the drink being swallowed in its entirety, grounds and all. It was a decoction for the next four centuries.

When the long-handled Arabian metal boiler made its appearance in the early part of the sixteenth century, the method of preparation and service had much improved. The Arabs and the Turks had made it a social adjunct, and its use was no longer confined to the physicians and the churchmen. It had become a stimulating refreshment for all the people; and at the same time, the Arabians and the Turks had developed a coffee ceremony for the higher cla.s.ses which was quite as wonderful as the tea ceremony of j.a.pan.

The common early method of preparation throughout the Levant was to steep the powder in water for a day, to boil the liquor half away, to strain it, and to keep it in earthen pots for use as wanted. In the sixteenth century, the small coffee boiler, or _ibrik_, caused the practise to be more of an instantaneous affair. The coffee was ground, and the powder was dropped into the boiling water, to be withdrawn from the fire several times as it boiled up to the rim. While still boiling, cinnamon and cloves were sometimes added before pouring the liquid off into the findjans, or little china cups, to be served with the addition of a drop of essence of amber. Later, the Turks added sugar during the boiling process.

From the first simple uncovered _ibrik_ there was developed, about the middle of the seventeenth century, a larger-size covered coffee boiler, the forerunner of the modern combination brewing and serving pot. This was a copper-plated kettle patterned after the oriental ewer with a broad base, bulbous body, and narrow neck. After having poured into it one and a half times as much water as the dish (cup) in which the drink was to be served would hold, the pot was placed on a lively fire. When the water boiled, the powdered coffee was tossed into the pot; and, as the liquid boiled up, it was taken from the fire and returned, probably a dozen times. Then the pot was placed in hot ashes to permit the grounds to settle. This done, the drink was served. Dufour, describing this process as practised in Turkey and Arabia, says:

One ought not to drink coffee, but suck it in as hot as one can. In order not to be burned, it is not necessary to place the tongue in the cup but hold the edge against the tongue with the lips above and below it, forcing it so little that the edges do not bear down, and then suck in; that is to say, swallow it sip by sip. If one is so delicate he can not stand the bitterness, he can temper it with sugar. It is a mistake to stir the coffee in the pot, the grounds being worth nothing. In the Levant it is only the sc.u.m of the people who swallow the grounds.

La Roque says:

The Arabians, when they take their coffee off the fire, immediately wrap the vessel in a wet cloth which fines the liquor instantly, makes it cream at the top and occasion a more pungent steam, which they take great pleasure in snuffing up as the coffee is pouring into the cups. They, like all other nations of the East, drink their coffee without sugar.

Some of the Orientals afterward modified the early coffee-making procedure by pouring the boiling water on the powdered coffee in the serving cups. They thus obtained "a foaming and perfumed beverage," says Jardin, "to which we (the French) could not accustom ourselves because of the powder which remains in suspension. Nevertheless, clarified coffee may be obtained in the Orient. In Mecca, in order to filter it, they strain it through stopples of dried herbs, put into the opening of a jar."

Sugar seems to have been introduced into coffee in Cairo about 1625.

Veslingius records that the coffee drinkers in Cairo's three thousand coffee houses "did begin to put sugar in their coffee to correct the bitterness of it", and that "others made sugar plums of the coffee berries". This coffee confection later appeared in Paris, and about the same time (1700) at Montpellier was introduced a coffee water, "a sort of rosa-folis of an agreeable scent that has somewhat of the smell of coffee roasted." These novelties, however, were designed to please only "the most nice lovers of coffee"; for _ennui_ and boredom demanded new sensations then as now.

Boiling continued the favorite method of preparing the beverage until well into the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, we learn from English references that it was the custom to buy the beans of apothecaries, to dry them in an oven, or to roast them in an old pudding dish or frying pan before pounding them to a powder with mortar and pestle, to force the powder through a lawn sieve, and then to boil it with spring water for a quarter of an hour. The following recipe from a rare book published in London, 1662, details the manner of making coffee in the seventeenth century:

COFFEE MAKING IN 1662

To make the drink that is now much used called coffee.

The coffee-berries are to be bought at any Druggist, about three shillings the pound; take what quant.i.ty you please, and over a charcoal fire, in an old pudding-pan or frying-pan, keep them always stirring until they be quite black, and when you crack one with your teeth that it is black within as it is without; yet if you exceed, then do you waste the Oyl, which only makes the drink; and if less, then will it not deliver its Oyl, which must make the drink; and if you should continue fire till it be white, it will then make no coffee, but only give you its salt. The Berry prepared as above, beaten and forced through a Lawn Sive, is then fit for use.

Take clean water, and boil one-third of it away what quant.i.ty soever it be, and it is fit for use. Take one quart of this prepared Water, put in it one ounce of your prepared coffee, and boil it gently one-quarter of an hour, and it is fit for your use; drink one-quarter of a pint as hot as you can sip it.

In England, about this time, the coffee drink was not infrequently mixed with sugar candy, and even with mustard. In the coffee houses, however, it was usually served black, without sugar or milk.

About 1660, Nieuhoff, the Dutch amba.s.sador to China, was the first to make a trial of coffee with milk in imitation of tea with milk. In 1685, Sieur Monin, a celebrated doctor of Gren.o.ble, France, first recommended _cafe au lait_ as a medicine. He prepared it thus: Place on the fire a bowl of milk. When it begins to rise, throw in to it a bowl of powdered coffee, a bowl of moist sugar, and let it boil for some time.

We read that in 1669 "coffee in France was a hot black decoction of muddy grounds thickened with syrup."

Angelo Rambaldi in his _Ambrosia Arabica_ thus describes coffee making in Italy and other European countries in 1691:

DESCRIPTION OF THE VASE FOR MAKING THE DECOCTION, DOSE OF POWDER AND OF THE WATER NECESSARY AND TIME OF BOILING IT.

Two such vessels having a large paunch to reach the fire, two others with long necks and narrow, with a cover to restrain their spirituous and volatile particles which when thrown off by the heat are easily lost. These vessels are called Ibriq in Arabia. They are made of copper--coated with white outside and inside. We, who do not possess the art of making them should select an earth vitriate, sulphate of copper, or any other material adapted for kitchen ware: it might even be of silver.

The quant.i.ty of water and powder has no certain rule, by reason of the difference of our nature and tastes, and each one after some experience will use his own judgment to adjust it to his desire and liking.

Maronita infused two ounces of powder in three litres of water.

Cotovico in his voyage to Jerusalem affirms that he has observed six ounces of the former to 20 litres of the latter, boiled until it was reduced to half the quant.i.ty. Thevenot a.s.serts that the Turks in three cups of water are contented with a good spoonful of powder. I have observed however that in Africa, France and England, into about six ounces of water (which with them is one cup) a dram of the powder is infused and this agrees with my taste--but I have wished at times to change the dose.

Others put the water into the vase and when it begins to boil add the powder, but because it is full of spirit at the first contact with the heat it rises and boils over the edge of the vase. Take it away from the fire till the boiling ceases, then put it on the fire again and let it stay a short time boiling with the cover on: Stand it on warm ashes until it settles, after which slowly pour a little of the decoction into an earthen vessel, or one of porcelain or any other kind, as hot as can be borne, and drink a sip; if it pleases your taste, add a portion of cardamom, cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon, and dissolve a little sugar in the water; yet because these substances will alter the taste of this simple, they are not prized by many experts.

Modern Arabia, Ba.s.sa, Turkey, the Great Orient, those who are travelling or in the army, infuse the powder in cold water, and then boiling it as directed above, bear witness to its efficacy.

All times are opportune to take this salutary drink (beverage).