All About Coffee Part 138

If the coffee pot (the "_Old Dominion_", of course, for in a common boiler this process would ruin the coffee by wasting the aroma) be set on the range or stove, or near the fire, so as to be kept hot all night preparatory to boiling in the morning, the beverage will be found in the morning, rich, mellow, and of a most delicious flavor.

Coffee used at supper time should be placed on or near the fire immediately after dinner and kept hot or simmering--not boiling--all the afternoon.

Try this method if you wish coffee in perfection.

Wood's improved coffee roaster is acknowledged to be the best article of the kind now in use.

This patent coffee roaster has been improved by the introduction of a triangular f.l.a.n.g.e inside of each of the hemispheres, as seen in the cut. These f.l.a.n.g.es, as the roaster is turned, catch the coffee and throw it from the inner surface, thus insuring a perfect uniformity in the burning.

The Woods roaster (1849) and the Old Dominion Coffee Pot (1856) have been referred to in chapter x.x.xIV.

From the _Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery_, we learn some more about the customs prevailing "among the first cooks in the country" in roasting and making coffee in the United States about the middle of the nineteenth century. For example:

ROASTING COFFEE BEANS

Put the beans in the roaster, set this before a moderate fire, and turn slowly until the Coffee takes a good brown colour; for this it should require about twenty-five minutes. Open the cover to see when it is done. If browned, transfer it to an earthen jar, cover it tightly, and use when needed.

Or a more simple plan, and even more effectual, is to take a tin baking-dish, b.u.t.ter well the bottom, put the Coffee in it, and set it in a moderate oven until the beans take a strong golden colour, twenty minutes sufficing for this. Toss them frequently with a wooden spoon as they are cooking.

Another plan is to put in a small frying-pan 1 1b. of raw Coffee-beans and set the pan on the fire, stirring and shaking occasionally till the beans are yellow: then cover the frying-pan and shake the Coffee about till it is a dark brown. Move the pan off the fire, keep the cover on, and when the beans are a little cool, break an egg over them and stir them until they are all well coated with the egg. Then store the Coffee in tins or jars with tight-fitting lids, and grind it as wanted for use.

Coffee should always be bought in the bean and ground as required, otherwise it is liable to extensive adulteration with chicory (or succory); some persons like the addition, but the epicure who is really fond of Coffee would not admit of its introduction.

MAKING BREAKFAST COFFEE.

Allow 1 tablespoonful of Coffee to each person. The Coffee when ground should be measured, put into the Coffee-pot, and boiling water poured over it in the proportion of 3/4 pint to each tablespoonful of Coffee, and the pot put on the fire; the instant it boils, take the pot off, uncover it, and let it stand a minute or two; then cover it again, put it back on the fire, and let it boil up again. Take it from the fire and let it stand for five minutes to settle. It is then ready to pour out.

This work recommended as among the latest and best devices for coffee making, all those manufactured or sold in this country by Adams & Son; the English coffee biggin; General Hutchinson's coffee pot and urn, combining De Belloy's and Rumford's ideas; Le Brun's Cafetiere for making coffee by distillation and by steam pressure, pa.s.sing it directly into the cup; a Vienna coffee-making machine, and a Russian coffee reversible pot called the Potsdam.

Among two score of coffee recipes for making various kinds of extracts, ices, candies, cakes, etc., flavored with coffee, there is a curious one for coffee beer, the invention of Frenchman named Pluehart. "The ingredients and quant.i.ties in a thousand parts are--Strong coffee 300; rum 300; syrup thickened with gum senegal 65; alcoholic extract of orange peel 10; and water 325."

"It does not appear to have reached any important degree of popularity", adds the editor.

In 1861, G.o.dey's _Lady's Book and Magazine_ noted with approval the growing custom of hotel and restaurant guests to order coffee instead of wines or spirits with their dinners. On the subject of "How to make a cup of coffee" it had this to say:

Which is the best way of making coffee? In this particular notions differ. For example, the Turks do not trouble themselves to take off the bitterness by sugar, nor do they seek to disguise the flavor by milk, as is our custom. But they add to each dish a drop of the essence of amber, or put a couple of cloves in it, during the process of preparation. Such flavoring would not, we opine, agree with western tastes. If a cup of the very best coffee, prepared in the highest perfection and boiling hot, be placed on a table in the middle of a room and suffered to cool, it will, in cooling, fill the room with its fragrance: but becoming cold, it will lose much of its flavor. Being again heated, its taste and flavor will be still further impaired, and heated a third time, it will be found vapid and nauseous. The aroma diffused through the room proved that the coffee has been deprived of its most volatile parts, and hence of its agreeableness and virtue. By pouring boiling water on the coffee, and surrounding the containing vessel with boiling water, the finer qualities of the coffee will be preserved.

Boiling coffee in a coffee-pot is neither economical or judicious, so much of the aroma being wasted by this method. Count Rumford (no mean authority) states that one pound of good Mocha, when roasted and ground, will make fifty-six cups of the very best coffee, but it must be ground finely, or the surfaces of the particles only will be acted upon by the hot water, and much of the essence will be left in the grounds.

In the East, coffee is said to arouse, exhilarate, and keep awake, allaying hunger, and giving to the weary renewed strength and vigor, while it imparts a feeling of comfort and repose. The Arabians, when they take their coffee off the fire, wrap the vessel in a wet cloth, which fines the liquor instantly, and makes it cream at the top. There is one great essential to be observed, namely, that coffee should not be ground before it is required for use, as in a powdered state its finer qualities evaporate.

We pa.s.s over the usual modes of making coffee, as being familiar to every lady who presides over every household; and content ourselves with the most modern and approved Parisian methods, though we may add that a common recipe for good coffee is--two ounces of coffee and one quart of water. Filter or boil ten minutes, and leave to clear ten minutes.

The French make an extremely strong coffee. For breakfast, they drink one-third of the infusion, and two-thirds of hot milk. The _cafe noir_ used after dinner, is the very essence of the berry.

Only a small cup is taken, sweetened with white sugar or sugar-candy, and sometimes a little _eau de vie_ is poured over the sugar in a spoon held above the surface, and set on fire; or after it, a very small gla.s.s of _liqueur_, called a _cha.s.se-cafe_, is immediately drunk. But the best method, prevalent in France, for making coffee (and the infusion may be strong or otherwise as taste may direct) is to take a large coffee-pot with an upper receptacle made to fit close into it, the bottom of which is perforated with small holes, containing in its interior two movable metal strainers, over the second of which the powder is to be placed, and immediately under the third. Upon this upper strainer pour boiling water, and continue to do so gently; until it bubbles up through the strainer: then shut the cover of the machine close down, place it near the fire, and so soon as the water has drained through the coffee, repeat the operation until the whole intended quant.i.ty be pa.s.sed. No finings are required. Thus all the fragrance of its perfume will be retained with all the balsamic and stimulating powers of its essence. This is a true Parisian mode, and _voila!_ a cup of excellent coffee.

This article is most interesting in that it shows the revolt against boiling coffee had started in the United States; also that the importance of fine grinding was being recognized and emphasized by the leaders of the best thought of the nation.

Probably the first scientific inquiry into the subject of coffee roasting and brewing in the United States was that detailed by August T.

Dawson and Charles M. Wetherill, Ph.D., M.D., in the _Journal of the Franklin Inst.i.tute_ for July and August, 1855. The following is a digest:

There are two cla.s.ses of beverages: 1, alcoholic, and 2, nitrogenized. Nitrogenized foods are effective to replace the substance of the different organs of the body wasted away by the process of vitality. Coffee is one of these.

Besides the tannin, the coffee berry contains two substances, one the nitrogenized quality, caffeine, which is about one percent and is not altered in roasting, and the other a volatile oil which is developed in roasting and which gives the coffee its flavor. Dr.

Julius Lehmann (Liebig's Annales Lx.x.xVII. 205) says that coffee r.e.t.a.r.ds the waste tissues of the body and diminishes the amount of food necessary to preserve life. This effect is due to the oil.

Much of the nutritive portion of coffee is lost by European methods of making.

Good coffee is very rare. These experiments were made to ascertain whether a potable coffee could not be offered to the public at as low a price as the raw or roasted now is. In order to be successful we needed to extract a larger portion of the nutritive substance than is extracted in the household. The experiments have proved vain.

As a result of our experiments with different ways of roasting and brewing coffee, we have found the following plan to be the most convenient and the best: the coffee will taste the same every time and it will taste good. If a good berry be properly roasted and the infusion be of the proper strength, good coffee must result. A Mocha berry should be selected and roasted seven or eight pounds at a time in a cylindrical drum. After roasting it should be placed in a stone jar with a mouth three inches in diameter. The jar should be closed air-tight. This will furnish two cups of coffee daily for six months. A quart should be taken from the jar at a time and ground. The ground coffee should be kept in covered gla.s.s jars.

The best coffee pot was found to be the common biggin having an upper compartment with a perforated bottom upon which to place the coffee. To make one cup of this infusion, place half an ounce of ground coffee in the upper compartment and six fluid ounces of water into the bottom. Put the biggin over a gas lamp. After three minutes the water will boil. When steam appears, take the biggin from the fire and pour the water into a cup and thence immediately into the top of the biggin where it will extract the berry by replacement. (Here follows an experiment.)

This experiment shows that loss of weight is no criterion that coffee is properly roasted, neither is the color (by itself) nor the temperature, nor the time.

Next we experimented to ascertain whether the aroma developed by roasting coffee and which is lost might not be collected and added to the coffee at pleasure. An attempt was made to drive the volatile oils from roasted coffee by steam and make a dried extract of the residual coffee to which the oils were to be later added.

Two attempts were made and both failed. It appears that but a small quant.i.ty of the aroma is lost in roasting and that is mixed with bad smelling vapors from which it is impossible to free it.

Then we tried to make a potable coffee by making an aqueous extract of raw coffee, evaporating to dryness and roasting the residue.

(Here follows the experiment.)

This also was unsuccessful. The great trouble here is a dark s.h.i.+ny residue, which, while tasteless, is very disagreeable to look at.

In the preparation of coffee by boiling, two and a half times as much matter is extracted as by biggin.

The proper method of roasting coffee is as follows: It should be placed in a cylinder and turned constantly over a bright fire. When white smoke begins to appear, the contents should be closely watched. Keep testing the grains. As soon as a grain breaks easily at a slight blow, at which time the color will be a light chestnut brown, the coffee is done. Cool it by lifting some up and dropping it back with a tin cup. If it be left to cool in a heap there is great danger of over-roasting. Keep the coffee only in air-tight vessels. _Measure_ the infusions, a half ounce of coffee to six ounces of water per cup.

All "extracts of coffee" are worthless. Most of them are composed of burned sugar, chicory, carrots, etc.

In 1883, an authority of that day, Francis B. Thurber, in his book, _Coffee; from Plantation to Cup_, which he dedicated to the railroad restaurant man at Poughkeepsie, because he served an "ideal cup of coffee", came out strongly for the good old boiling method with eggs, sh.e.l.ls included. This was the Thurber recipe:

Grind moderately fine a large cup or small bowl of coffee; break into it one egg with sh.e.l.l; mix well, adding enough cold water to thoroughly wet the grounds; upon this pour one pint of boiling water: let it boil slowly for ten to fifteen minutes, according to the variety of coffee used and the fineness to which it is ground.

Let it stand three minutes to settle, then pour through a fine wire-sieve into a warm coffee pot; this will make enough for four persons. At table, first put the sugar into the cup, then fill half-full of boiling milk, add your coffee, and you have a delicious beverage that will be a revelation to many poor mortals who have an indistinct remembrance of, and an intense longing for, an ideal cup of coffee. If cream can be procured so much the better, and in that case boiling water can be added either in the pot or cup to make up for the s.p.a.ce occupied by the milk as above; or condensed milk will be found a good subst.i.tute for cream.

In 1886, however, Jabez Burns, who knew something about the practical making of the beverage as well as the roasting and grinding operations, said:

Have boiling water handy. Take a clean dry pot and put in the ground coffee. Place on fire to warm pot and coffee. Pour on sufficient boiling water, not more than two-thirds full. As soon as the water boils add a little cold water and remove from fire. To extract the greatest virtue of coffee grind it fine and pour scalding water over it.

John Cotton Dana, of the Newark Public Library, says he remembers how in his old home in Woodstock, Vt., they had always, in the attic, a big stone jar of green coffee. This was sacred to the great feast days, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. Just before those anniversaries, the jar was brought forward and the proper amount of coffee was taken out and roasted in a flat sheet-iron pan on the top of the stove, being stirred constantly and watched with great care. "As my memory seems to say that this was not constantly done," says Mr. Dana, "it would seem that, even then, my father, who kept the general store in the village, bought roasted coffee in Boston or New York."

At the close of the century, there were still many advocates of boiling coffee; but although the coffee trade was not quite ready to declare its absolute independence in this direction, there were many leaders who boldly proclaimed their freedom from the old prejudice. Arthur Gray, in his _Over the Black Coffee_, as late as 1902, quoted "the largest coffee importing house in the United States" as advocating the use of eggs and egg-sh.e.l.ls and boiling the mixture for ten minutes.

_Latest Developments in Better Coffee Making_

Better coffee making by co-operative trade effort got its initial stimulus at the 1912 convention of the National Coffee Roasters a.s.sociation. As a result of discussions at that meeting and thereafter, a Better Coffee Making Committee was created for investigation and research.

The coffee trade's declaration of independence in the matter of boiled coffee was made at the 1913 convention of the National Coffee Roasters a.s.sociation, when, after hearing the report of the Better Coffee Making Committee, presented by Edward Aborn of New York, it adopted a resolution saying that the recommendations met with its approval and ordering that they be printed and circulated.