All About Coffee, William H. Ukers [short story to read .txt] 📗
- Author: William H. Ukers
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Formerly small bags of baize were used to percolate coffee. The water was poured on the coffee, and when they were new the coffee percolated through them was pretty good, but when they had been used a few times they became greasy and it was very difficult to clean them by any means. The greasy baize altered the quality of the coffee, and in spite of all efforts to keep it clean the coffee had a tarnished appearance very disagreeable to the view. Very few persons use them at present. The apparatus most in use for the percolation of coffee is a tin coffee-pot composed of two parts. The upper one has a filter or sieve on which the coffee powder is placed and through which the filtered coffee must pass. Boiling water is poured on the coffee. The liquor which percolates falls in the second part. Then the upper part is removed and the coffee is ready as a beverage. There are very many systems of coffee pots. One of the best is the Russian one, which consists of a receptacle composed of two parts resembling two halves of an egg screwed together. One part contains the hot water and the other the ground coffee. In the center there is a filter. Turning the pot upside down the percolation takes place very slowly and no aroma is lost.
The tin plate which is generally used to make the coffee pot has many drawbacks. One of them is the dissolution of iron which takes place after it has been used for a short time.
The quality of coffee, as a beverage, depends principally on the degree of heat of the water. Experience has shown that a medium class of coffee prepared at a moderate heat gives a very good liquor, while excellent coffee on which boiling water has been poured did not give a very good liquor. Therefore, instead of pouring boiling water at 100°C. in a porcelain or silver coffee-pot, those who desire to make a perfect coffee must use water heated from 60° to 75°C.
France. Also about the middle of the nineteenth century the French naturalist, Du Tour, thus describes one manner of making coffee in France:
Let the powder be poured into the coffee-pot filled with boiling water, in the proportion of two ounces and a half to two pounds, or two English pints of water. Let the mixture be stirred with a spoon, and the coffee-pot be soon taken off the fire, but suffered to remain closely shut, for about at least two hours, on the warm ashes of a wood fire. During the infusion the liquor should be several times agitated by a chocolate frother, or something of the same kind, and be finally left for about a quarter of an hour to settle.
Café au lait was not made by boiling coffee and milk together, as milk was not proper to extract the coffee; the coffee was first made as café noir, only stronger; as much of this coffee was poured in the cup as was required, and the cup was then filled up with boiled milk. Café a la crème, was made by adding boiled cream to strong clear coffee and heating them together.
In France, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, coffee was roasted over charcoal fires in earthenware dishes or saucepans, stirred with a spatula or wooden spoon, or in small cylinder or globular roasters of iron. Gas roasting was also practised. When roasted in large batches, the beans were cooled in wicker baskets, tossed into the air. The grinding was preferably done in mortars or in box mills of pyramid shape with receiving drawers, and was not too fine.
The usual method of making coffee in France among the better classes at this time was by means of improved De Belloy drip devices, double glass vacuum filters, pumping percolators (double circulation devices), the Russian egg-shaped pots, and the Viennese machines. The last-named were metal pumping percolators with glass tops, usually swung between the uprights of a carry arrangement, the base of which held a spirit lamp.
Among the numerous French machines which became well known were: Reparlier's glass "filter"; Egrot's steam cloth-filter machine and Malen's percolator apparatus, both designed for barracks and ships, where previously the coffee had been brewed in soup kettles; Bouillon Muller's steam percolator; Laurent's whistling coffee pot, a steam percolator which announced when the coffee was ready; Ed. Loysel's rapid filter, a hydrostatic percolator; and those pots to which Morize, Lemare, Grandin, Crepaux, and Gandais gave their names.
In 1892, the French minister of war directed that, in the army roasting and grinding operations, the coffee chaff should no longer be thrown away, as it had been found that it was rich in caffein and aroma constituents.
Coffee à la minute, which appeared in France in the nineteenth century, was made by decoction or infusion through a funnel pierced with holes and covered inside with blotting paper, or a woolen strainer cloth. This system, says Jardin, suggested the economical coffee pot.
A popular German drip coffee maker of the late nineteenth century employs a plug in the spout which provides air pressure to hold back the infusion until the plug is removed.
Pierre Joseph Buc'hoz, physician to the king of Poland, in 1787, made a business of supplying roasted coffee in small packets, each sufficient for one cup. He built up quite a trade until one day he was caught substituting roasted rye for coffee. This was the Buc'hoz method of making coffee, much practised by the lower classes because he was looked upon as an authority:
Boil the water in a coffee pot. When it boils, draw it from the fire long enough to add an ounce of coffee powder to a pound of water. Stir with a spoon. Return it to the fire and when it boils move it back somewhat from the heat and let it simmer for eight minutes. Clarify with sugar or deer horn powder.
Early Coffee Making in the United States
The coffee drink reached the colonies, first as a beverage for the well-to-do, about 1668. When introduced to the general public through the coffee houses about 1700, it was first sipped from small dishes as in England; and no one inquired too closely as to how it was made. When, half a century later, it had displaced beer and tea for breakfast, its correct making became a matter of polite inquiry. It was not until well into the nineteenth century that there was any suggestion of scientific interest, and not until within the last decade was any real chemical analysis of brewed coffee undertaken with a view to producing a scientific cup of the beverage.
At first, owing to the great distances, and difficulties surrounding communications, between the colonies, news of improvements in coffee makers and coffee making traveled slowly, and coffee customs brought from Europe by the early settlers became habits that were not easily changed. Some of the worst have clung on, ignoring the march of improvement, and seem as firmly entrenched in suburban and rural communities today as they were two hundred years ago.
Indeed, despite the fact that the United States have been the largest consumer of coffee among the nations for nearly half a century, it is only within the last ten years that coffee properly prepared could be obtained outside the principal cities. Even today, the average consumer is sadly in need of education in correct coffee brewing. It would be an excellent idea if all the coffee propaganda funds could be concentrated on a study of this one phase of the coffee question for several years, and the recommendations published in such fashion as firmly to fix in the minds of the rising generation a knowledge of correct coffee brewing. The facts of the case are that, generally speaking, coffee is still prepared in slovenly fashion in the average American home. However, with the good work done in recent years by organized trade effort to correct this abuse of our national beverage, signs are plentiful that the time is not far distant when a lasting reformation in coffee making will have been accomplished.
In colonial times the coffee drink was mostly a decoction. Esther Singleton tells us that in New Amsterdam coffee was boiled in a copper pot lined with tin and drunk as hot as possible With sugar or honey and spices. "Sometimes a pint of fresh milk was brought to the boiling point and then as much drawn tincture of coffee was added, or the coffee was put in cold water with the milk and both were boiled together and drunk. Rich people mixed cloves, cinnamon or sugar with ambergris in the coffee.[376]"
Ground cardamom seeds were also used to flavor the decoction.
In the early days of New England, the whole beans were frequently boiled for hours with not wholly pleasing results in forming either food or drink[377].
In New Orleans, the ground coffee was put into a tin or pewter coffee dripper, and the infusion was made by slowly pouring the boiling water over it after the French fashion. The coffee was not considered good unless it actually stained the cup. This method still obtains among the old Creole families.
Boiling coarsely pounded coffee for fifteen minutes to half an hour was common practise in the colonies before 1800.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, the best practise was to roast the coffee in an iron cylinder that stood before the hearth fire. It was either turned by a handle or wound up like a jack to go by itself. The grinding was done in a lap or wall mill; and among the best known makes were Kenrick's, Wilson's, Wolf's, John Luther's, George W.M. Vandegrift's, and Charles Parker's Best Quality.
To make coffee "without boiling" the cookery books of the period advised the housewife to obtain "a biggin, the best of which is what in France is called a Grecque."
In 1844, the Kitchen Directory and American Housewife's advice on the subject of coffee making was the following:
Coffee should be put in an iron pot and dried near a moderate fire for several hours before roasting (in pot over hot coals and stirring constantly). It is sufficiently roasted when biting one of the lightest colored kernels—if brittle the whole is done. A coffee roaster is better than an open pot. Use a tablespoonful ground to a pint of boiling water. Boil in tin pot twenty to twenty-five minutes. If boiled longer it will not taste fresh and lively. Let stand four or five minutes to settle, pour off grounds into a coffee pot or urn. Put fish skin or isinglass size of a nine pence in pot when put on to boil or else the white and shell of half an egg to a couple of quarts of coffee. French coffee is made in a German filter, the water is turned on boiling hot and one-third more coffee is needed than when boiled in the common way.
In 1856 the Ladies' Home Magazine (now the Ladies' Home Journal) printed the following, which fairly sums up the coffee making customs of that period:
Coffee, if you would have its best flavor, should be roasted at home; but not in an open pan, for this permits a large amount of aroma to escape. The roaster should be a closed sphere or cylinder. The aroma, upon which the
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