All About Coffee by William H. Ukers (best new books to read .TXT) 📕
CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF COFFEE PROPAGATION
A brief account of the cultivation of the coffee plant in the Old World, and of its introduction into the New--A romantic coffee adventure Page 5
CHAPTER III
EARLY HISTORY OF COFFEE DRINKING
Coffee in the Near East in the early centuries--Stories of its origin--Discovery by physicians and adoption by the Church--Its spread through Arabia, Persia, and Turkey--Persecutions and Intolerances--Early coffee manners and customs Page 11
CHAPTER IV
INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO WESTERN EUROPE
When the three great temperance beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee, came to Europe--Coffee first mentioned by Rauwolf in 1582--Early days of coffee in Italy--How Pope Clement VIII baptized it and made it a truly Christian beverage--The first Europe
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Sidewalk Annex, Café de la Paix, Paris, with Opera House in Background—Summer of 1918
The fact that coffee was, and still is, quite generally sold to the consumer green, accounts for Central American coffees taking first place. Style takes preference over everything else when it comes to selling to a Frenchman.
To the American coffee merchant it seems that the French are carrying their artistic tastes to an unreasonable extreme when they apply them to coffee; for coffee is grown to drink and not to look at.
Since the coming of the large coffee roaster, who delivers roasted coffee right down the line to the consumer, Santos has come in for its share of the business. The roasters are getting good results out of Santos blends, up to fifty percent and sixty percent with West Indian and Central American coffees. Rio is as much in disfavor in France as it is in the United States, perhaps more so.
In Brittany the demand is for peaberry coffee, no matter of what variety. This comes about from the fact that the people of this section of the country still do a great deal of their roasting at home, and have become accustomed to the use of peaberry coffee because they do not have the improved hand roasters, and still do a great deal of their roasting in pans in the ovens of their stoves. The peaberry coffee rolls about so nicely in the pan that they get a much more uniform roast.
Nearly all the coffee is ground at home, which is not a bad practise for the consumer; but perhaps works hardship on the dealer, who can mix some grade grinders into his blends without doing them any material harm. Where coffee mills are used in the stores, they are of the Strong-Arm family and of an ancient heritage. To get a growl out of the grocer in France, buy a kilo of coffee and ask him to grind it.
Package coffee and proprietary brands have not come into their own to the extent that they have in the United States, although there are at present two firms in Paris which have started in this business and are advertising extensively on billboards, in street cars, and in the subways. However, most coffee is still sold in bulk. The butter, egg, and cheese stores of France do a very large business in coffee. Prior to the war and high prices, there were some very large firms doing a premium business in coffee, tea, spices, etc. They still exist, and have a very fine trade; but since the high prices of coffees and premiums, the business has gone down very materially. They operate by the wagon-route and solicitor method, just as some of our American companies do. One very large firm in Paris has been in this business for more than thirty years, operating branches and wagons in every town, village, and hamlet in France.
Café de la Régence, Paris, Showing the Typical Continental Arrangement of Seats
The consumption of coffee is increasing very materially in France; some say, on account of the high price of wine, others hold that coffee is simply growing in favor with the people. Among the masses, French breakfast consists of a bowl or cup of café au lait, or half a cup or bowl of strong black coffee and chicory, and half a cup of hot milk, and a yard of bread. The workingman turns his bread on end and inserts it into his bowl of coffee, allowing it to soak up as much of the liquid as possible. Then he proceeds to suck this concoction into his system. His approval is demonstrated by the amount of noise he makes in the operation.
Among the better classes, the breakfast is the same, café au lait, with rolls and butter, and sometimes fruit. The brew is prepared by the drip, or true percolator, method or by filtration. Boiling milk is poured into the cup from a pot held in one hand together with the brewed coffee from a pot held in the other, providing a simultaneous mixture. The proportions vary from half-and-half to one part coffee and three parts milk. Sometimes, the service is by pouring into the cup a little coffee then the same quantity of milk and alternating in this way until the cup is filled.
Coffee is never drunk with any meal but breakfast, but is invariably served en demi-tasse after the noon and the evening meals. In the home, the usual thing after luncheon or dinner is to go into the salon and have your demi-tasse and liqueur and cigarettes before a cosy grate fire. A Frenchman's idea of after-dinner coffee is a brew that is unusually thick and black, and he invariably takes with it his liqueur, no matter if he has had a cocktail for an appetizer, a bottle of red wine with his meat course, and a bottle of white wine with the salad and dessert course. When the demi-tasse comes along, with it must be served his cordial in the shape of cognac, benedictine, or crème de menthe. He can not conceive of a man not taking a little alcohol with his after-dinner coffee, as an aid, he says, to digestion.
In Normandy, there prevails a custom in connection with coffee drinking that is unique. They produce in this province great quantities of what is known as cidre, made from a particular variety of apple grown there—in other words, just plain hard cider. However, they distil this hard cider, and from the distillation they get a drink called calvados.
The man from Normandy takes half a cup of coffee, and fills the cup with calvados, sweetened with sugar, and drinks it with seeming relish. Ice-cold coffee will almost sizzle when calvados is poured into it. It tastes like a corkscrew, and one drink has the same effect as a crack on the head with a hammer. From the toddling age up, the Norman takes his calvados and coffee.
In the south of France they make a concoction from the residue of grapes. They boil the residue down in water, and get a drink called marc; and it is used in much the same way as the Norman in the north uses calvados. Then there is also the very popular summertime drink known as mazagran, which in that region means seltzer water and cold coffee, or what Americans might call a coffee highball.
Making coffee in France has been, and always will be, by the drip and the filtration methods. The large hotels and cafés follow these methods almost entirely, and so does the housewife. When company comes, and something unusual in coffee is to be served, Mr. Beeson says he has known the cook to drip the coffee, using a spoonful of hot water at a time, pouring it over tightly packed, finely ground coffee, allowing the water to percolate through to extract every particle of oil. They use more ground coffee in bulk than they get liquid in the cup, and sometimes spend an hour producing four or five demi-tasses. It is needless to say that it is more like molasses than coffee when ready for drinking.
It is not unusual in some parts of France to save the coffee grounds for a second or even a third infusion, but this is not considered good practise.
Von Liebig's idea of correct coffee making has been adapted to French practise in some instances after this fashion: put used coffee grounds in the bottom chamber of a drip coffee pot. Put freshly ground coffee in the upper chamber. Pour on boiling water. The theory is that the old coffee furnishes body and strength, and the fresh coffee the aroma.
The cafés that line the boulevards of Paris and the larger cities of France all serve coffee, either plain or with milk, and almost always with liqueur. The coffee house in France may be said to be the wine house; or the wine house may be said to be the coffee house. They are inseparable. In the smallest or the largest of these establishments coffee can be had at any time of day or night. The proprietor of a very large café in Paris says his coffee sales during the day almost equal his wine sales.
The French, young or old, take a great deal of pleasure in sitting out on the sidewalk in front of a café, sipping coffee or liqueur. Here they love to idle away the time just watching the passing show.
In Paris, there are hundreds of these cafés lining the boulevards, where one may sit for hours before the small tables reading the newspapers, writing letters, or merely idling. In the morning, from eight to eleven, employees, men-about-town, tourists, and provincials throng the cafés for café au lait. The waiters are coldly polite. They bring the papers, and brush the table—twice for café créme (milk), and three times for café complet (with bread and butter).
In the afternoon, café means a small cup or glass of café noir, or café nature. It is double the usual amount of coffee dripped by percolator or filtration device, the process consuming eight to ten minutes. Some understand café noir to mean equal parts of coffee and brandy with sugar and vanilla to taste. When café noir is mixed with an equal quantity of cognac alone it becomes café gloria. Café mazagran is also much in demand in the summertime. The coffee base is made as for café noir, and it is served in a tall glass with water to dilute it to one's taste.
Few of the cafés that made Paris famous in the eighteenth century survive. Among those that are notable for their coffee service are the Café de la Paix; the Café de la Régence, founded in 1718; and the Café Prévost, noted also for chocolate after the theater.
There are about 200 of these coffee and wine shops in Paris. They are frequented mostly by laborers, clerks, and midinettes
Successor to the famous "Cave" of 1689
Germany. Germany originated the afternoon coffee function known as the kaffee-klatsch. Even today, the German family's reunion takes place around the coffee table on Sunday afternoons. In summer, when weather permits, the family will take a walk into the suburbs, and stop at a garden where coffee is sold in pots. The proprietor furnishes the coffee, the cups, the spoons and, in normal times, the sugar, two pieces to each cup; and the patrons bring their own cake. They put one piece of sugar into each cup and take the other pieces home to the "canary bird," 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
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