Kitobni o'qish: «Six Cups of Coffee», sahifa 5
French Coffee in a Pitcher
Put two full tablespoonfuls of finely-ground coffee in a well warmed pitcher; pour on it a pint of freshly-boiled water, and stir it to saturate the coffee: cover close with a cloth pressed into the top, and let it stand on the range five minutes. Have another heated vessel (a pitcher, if you choose); lay a piece of muslin (scalded) over it, and pour the coffee carefully through it. This will be clear, fragrant coffee.
Boiled Coffee
This is preferred by many, although it lacks the aroma of filtered coffee, which some consider a raw flavor. Put two tablespoonfuls of coffee into an ordinary coffee-pot, with a pint of boiling water. Stir it well; then let it just boil up, and set it where it will keep hot, but not boil. Throw into it a tablespoonful of cold water, and in five minutes pour out a cupful of the coffee, return it to the pot, repeat this, leave it five minutes to settle, and the coffee will be perfectly clear, without any egg to clear it.
Of course I am assuming, when I promise good coffee from either of these methods, that you use the best quality of coffee. Out of poor coffee you may make a clear liquid, but you can never make fine coffee. By fresh-boiled water, I mean water which has not been kept boiling, but is used as soon as it boils.
But it is not enough to know how to make good coffee. There are mysteries about it which beset even those who understand how to make it – periods when the coffee will be poor in spite of the quantity or quality of coffee used, or it will be bitter, black, and flavorless, even though we know we have the finest Java, the very same that has yielded golden fragrance to us heretofore. So it seems to me not enough to tell how to perform the simple feat of making coffee, but how to explain the periodical deterioration to which it is subject. The first difficulty is that of a weak product, in spite of the fact that you know the right quantity of coffee, and not too much water, is used. You may be almost sure, in this instance, that the coffee is not ground fine enough, half of it, probably, being as large as rice. Alter the screw of your mill. It is harder work to grind coffee when the mill is screwed tight, and you may not find it easy to keep it screwed just right, for it will develop a perverse tendency to loosen under Delia's care, which you will know by your coffee being weak and your grocer's bill long.
Another trouble that seems sometimes unaccountable: The coffee will be cloudy in spite of strainers. There is only one honest reason for this – the coffee may be ground too fine. But this is unlikely; it is more probable that the water has been poured all at once into the strainer, instead of gradually. This would have taken a long time to drip through, and a spoon has been used to facilitate the process, and muddy coffee is the result.
Sometimes families will have trouble of another sort. The coffee will be strong and bitter, without aroma, and when milk is added, instead of the beautiful, clear brown it should be, it will be of a blackish hue. This kind of poor coffee will come to the table week after week, and the quality of the coffee itself be blamed. It comes from one of two causes: It has been made too long and kept hot in the pot, or the pot itself is not well kept.
Not even milk-pans require more scrupulous care than the coffee-pot. It may be rinsed after each time of using, and yet be far from clean. There is an oily property about coffee which adheres in spite of rinsing out. You can see this for yourself by taking almost any coffee-pot that has been some time in use (unless it has been very carefully kept), and you will find clinging to it a sort of black grease (not brown); this will come off if you rub a cloth round the inside. Now, this deposit, for some reason which I should like to have explained, destroys the fragrance, color, and flavor of coffee. If you see your coffee looks black-brown instead of ruddy brown, you will know it will be flavorless, however strong.
To keep this black oil from the pot it must be daily washed (not rinsed), scalded, and dried. Each piece of a French coffee-pot should be separately dried before it is put away. If packed together wet, the strainers will in time give a metallic taste. Another reason for great care is that, without it, the strainers get clogged and the coffee will not go through.
If you find your coffee-pot has been neglected, put a piece of washing soda as large as a hickory-nut into hot water; set the strainers in it; let them stand on the stove for hours; put the same in the coffee-pot; then rub and brush both till the wire gauze is clear and all the black removed; then run boiling water slowly through, and dry it. Let the care be daily afterwards. The grease will not form, nor will the gauze fill up, if a pint or so of boiling water is poured through every morning and it is dried before being put away. Cold water is worse than useless, as it sets the oil. Sometimes the coffee-pot is put away exactly as it leaves the table, with left-over coffee in it. This should never be.
In drying the coffee-pot, or warming it, be careful not to let it get too hot, or there will be the flavor of burnt coffee to spoil the beverage for that occasion.
THE STORY OF COFFEE.
Its History, Properties and Powers, as described by Hester M. Poole
IT would be almost as desirable to know who drank the first decoction of coffee as "who tamed the first wild steed," or "who first conquered fire." Perhaps, like Charles Lamb's roast pig, it was first parched through the burning of a rude cabin, near which grew the odorous and inviting shrub. Some of the roasted berries may have fallen into a calabash of water, whose primitive possessor, weary and thirsty through vain efforts to save his shelter, drank unwittingly of the decoction, and, in the bewitching cup, made a great discovery while drowning his sense of misfortune. All great benefits to mankind have their origin in obscurity. It will never be known whether coffee was first used in Abyssinia, Arabia, or Ethiopia, as the plant grows wild in each of these countries. Its name is derived from Kaffa, in Eastern Africa, and a Mahometan legend ascribes its discovery to a party of dervishes, who, for some misdemeanor, were banished from the city of Mocha on or about the year 1250. Repairing to the mountains of Yemen, they came near starvation before finding that, upon chewing the wild coffee berry, their strength was marvellously supported and hunger relieved during enforced fasts and vigils. The prior, Sheykh Omer, began to steep the berries in water and to dry a store of the fruit for sustenance during long marches. Its use spread to other dervishes, then to Mecca and Mocha, Damascus and Aleppo, till, in the year 1550, coffee became the favorite drink in Constantinople, in which city coffee-houses were soon after opened. If Prior Omer has not yet been canonized, he should certainly fill the first vacant niche, for, surely, no man ever conferred greater enjoyment upon his fellows. Yet, during a long period – perhaps for ages – the wild tribes in the interior of Africa had before that date used the berry, and the incident of the burning of the primitive hut is neither far-fetched nor improbable.
As the mosques were comparatively deserted for the coffee-houses, the Mufti was petitioned to issue edicts against the use of a beverage so delicious as to cause the sons of the faithful to forget the call to prayer, and for a little while it was a secret and stolen delight. Seeing that it could not be suppressed, the priests, with an eye to the main chance – common to the powers that be in all nations – wisely decided to impose a high tax upon the berry, and the coffee bean, from that day to this, has been the daily inspiration of the dreamy, sensuous, and fate-worshiping Turk.
It was not until about the year 1670 that coffee-drinking became popular in France, though infrequent travelers had brought with them from the East a few pounds of the curious berry. At that time Solomon Aga was sent from the Sublime Porte to the court of Louis XIV., and he became very soon the rage, through the splendid and unique entertainments at which he figured as host. Costly Eastern stuffs, at that time seldom found in the elegant capital, displayed the rich and harmonious coloring of which the Turks are masters. Divans and cushions of embroidered velvet shot with gold, prayer rugs of every kind and device, vestments of many hues, bedizened with jewels and diamonds – all these made him the magnate of the city.
Most of all, the gay world coveted the services of exquisite porcelain and silver, the napkins fringed with bullion, and – served in cups of egg-shell porcelain, hot, strong, and fragrant – that delicious coffee which has never lost the place it then secured. On bended knees the slaves of the ambassador presented the choicest Mocha to these grande dames, who fluttered their fans with many grimaces and bent their piquant faces – bepatched, bepowdered, and berouged – over the steaming beverage. Such were the half-barbaric occasions upon which coffee first became generally known to that nation which is now so largely dependent upon the tiny brown berry of Arabia. Four years afterward an Armenian opened the first coffee-house to the Parisian public. Others followed his example, and a little later beer and wine were also served at the same establishments. Finer than any of his predecessors came a dusky Italian from Florence, and to his salon flocked the chief literary men of the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Coffee became a tyrant, and, as tyrant, it still holds matutinal and undisputed sway over the civilized portions of the earth.
Common as it is in this age, it was then an expensive luxury. The cultivation of the plant was confined to small districts, navigation tedious, and commerce with the East restricted. It is recorded that the daughters of King Louis of France had coffee imported for the use of the royal household at a cost of £3,200 yearly, – a fact which, after making all due allowance, shows that "rings" must have existed as far back as two centuries ago. The exact date of the introduction of coffee into England is not known. It is supposed to have been about the middle of the seventeenth century, and it became a popular drink there earlier than in France. Perhaps this may be due to the fact that the first English merchant who dealt in coffee had lived in Constantinople, and brought back with him to London a pretty Greek wife, who acted as his saleswoman. At first it sold for four or five guineas per pound, but soon became cheaper.
Coffee-houses multiplied, not only in the capital, but in all the large cities. Long antedating common newspapers, these shops were news centers, where the intelligent men of the age gathered to learn what was taking place, to discuss public affairs and governmental measures, and form public opinion. Considering that they were hot-beds of sedition and revolution, Charles II. ordered them closed in 1675, but the order was soon revoked. Cromwell ordered them closed again during the Protectorate for reasons somewhat similar; but they had become necessities to the people, and could not be put down for any great length of time.
Wits and poets, essayists and philosophers, daily gathered in the coffee-houses of London during several generations. How much they quoted from favorite authors – how faithfully they harangued and button-holed each other in that fashion, common to all ages, from the cloudy eras of the Chimpanzees to the year of our Lord 1887 – there are no annals full enough to describe. Within their precincts, what fear and folly, what foolishness and wisdom, have been uttered over steaming cups of Mocha!
It was at Will's Coffee-house, Covent Garden, that Dryden and Addison, Steele and Davenant, Carey and Pope, met with other luminaries, and if it be proven that other potations, more fiery and deep, mingled with those of the Eastern berry, it may well be surmised that coffee often supplied the place of worse beverages, or mitigated their evil effects. The "intellectual drink," as it has been called, gained friends every day among the wits of the reign of Queen Anne. Here Pope found the inspiration of "The Rape of the Lock," if not the "Essay on Man," an inspiration which he celebrated in these lines:
"From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide;
At once they gratify their sense and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.
Coffee! – which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes!"
Prior to the year 1700, coffee planting had been confined to Africa. The preceding year the President of the Dutch East Indies had brought some of the shrubs to Batavia, and Java rapidly became one of the first coffee-bearing countries – now exporting more than 75,000 tons annually. A shrub was sent from Batavia to Amsterdam shortly after, and in 1710 a shoot from this plant was taken as a curiosity to Louis XIV., who had it carefully tended in the Jardin des Plants, where it flourished for some years.
But, with the development of the New World, coffee was a necessary concomitant. Across the stormy ocean, to the Island of Martinique, the Grand Monarch sent three plants in 1720, only one of which survived the voyage, and from this one shrub have sprung all the rich and expensive plantations of the West Indies and Central and South America.
It was not till the year 1754 that the first coffee tree was planted by a friar in the garden of the convent to which he was attached in Rio Janeiro, and not till 1809 did the first cargo of coffee land on the shores of the United States. Now, three-quarters of our coffee comes from Brazil, although much of it is sold under the name of Mocha or Java, the Chamber of Commerce report itself declaring that the "Santos pea berry and other similar appearing beans are used by mixers to supplement the supply of genuine Mocha." It would be a gratification to be able to say that no other mixing or adulteration is practiced.
