Chapter 77

throw in a spoonful of coffee, and a spoonful of pounded sugar for each cup it is intended to make; it is carefully mixed; the coffee pot is replaced on the fire until the contents seem ready to boil over; it is taken off, and set on again; lastly it is quickly poured into the cups. Some coffee drinkers have this preparation boiled as many as five times. Petros makes a rule of not putting his coffee more than three times on the fire. He takes care in filling the cups to divide impartially the coloured froth which rises above the coffee pot; it is the _kaimaki_ of the coffee. A cup without _kaimaki_ is disgraced.

When the coffee is poured out you are at liberty to drink it boiling and muddy, or cold and clear. Real amateurs drink it without waiting. Those who allow the sediment to settle down, do not do so from contempt, for they afterwards collect it with the little finger and eat it carefully.

Thus prepared, coffee may be taken without inconvenience ten times a day: five cups of French coffee could not be drunk with impunity every day. It is because the coffee of the Turks and the Greeks is a diluted tonic, and ours is a concentrated tonic.

I have met at Paris many people who took their coffee without sugar, to imitate the Orientals. I think I ought to give them notice, between ourselves, that in the great coffee-houses of Athens, sugar is always presented with the coffee; in the khans and second-rate coffee-houses, it is served already sugared; and that at Smyrna and Constantinople, it has everywhere been brought to me sugared.

ITALY. In Italy coffee is roasted in a wholesale and retail way as well as in the home. French, German, Dutch, and Italian machines are used. The full city, or Italian, roast is favored. There are cafes as in France and other continental countries, and the drink is prepared in the French fashion. For restaurants and hotels, rapid filtering machines, first developed by the French and Italians, are used. In the homes, percolators and filtration devices are employed.

The De Mattia Brothers have a process designed to conserve the aroma in roasting. The Italians pay particular attention to the temperature in roasting and in the cooling operation. There is considerable glazing, and many coffee additions are used.

Like the French, the Italians make much of _cafe au lait_ for breakfast. At dinner, the _cafe noir_ is served.

Cafes of the French school are to be found along the Corso in Rome, the Toledo in Naples, in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuel and the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, and in the arcades surrounding the Piazza de San Marco in Venice, where Florian's still flourishes.

NETHERLANDS. In the Netherlands, too, the French cafe is a delightful feature of the life of the larger cities. The Dutch roast coffee properly, and make it well. The service is in individual pots, or in demi-tasses on a silver, nickle, or brass tray, and accompanied by a miniature pitcher containing just enough cream (usually whipped), a small dish about the size of an individual butter plate holding three squares of sugar, and a slender glass of water. This service is universal; the glass of water always goes with the coffee. It is the one sure way for Americans to get a drink of water. It is the custom in Holland to repair to some open-air cafe or indoor coffee house for the after-dinner cup of coffee. One seldom takes his coffee in the place where he has his dinner. These cafes are many, and some are elaborately designed and furnished. One of the most interesting is the St. Joris at the Hague, furnished in the old Dutch style. The approved way of making coffee in Holland is the French drip method.

NORWAY AND SWEDEN. French and German influences mark the roasting, grinding, preparing, and serving of coffee in Norway and Sweden. Generally speaking, not so much chicory is used, and a great deal of whipped cream is employed. In Norway, the boiling method has many followers. A big (open) copper kettle is used. This is filled with water, and the coffee is dumped in and boiled. In the poorer-class country homes, the copper kettle is brought to the table and set upon a wooden plate. The coffee is served directly from the kettle in cups. In better-class homes, the coffee is poured from the kettle into silver coffee pots in the kitchen, and the silver coffee pots are brought to the table. The only thing approaching coffee houses are the "coffee rooms" which are to be found in Christiania. These are small one-room affairs in which the plainer sorts of foods, such as porridge, may be purchased with the coffee. They are cheap, and are largely frequented by the poorer class of students, who use them as places in which to study while they drink their coffee.

In RUSSIA and SWITZERLAND, French and German methods obtain. Russia, however, drinks more tea than coffee, which by the masses is prepared in Turkish fashion, when obtainable. Usually, the coffee is only a cheap "substitute." The so-called _cafe a la Russe_ of the aristocracy, is strong black coffee flavored with lemon. Another Russian recipe calls for the coffee to be placed in a large punch bowl, and covered with a layer of finely chopped apples and pears; then cognac is poured over the mass, and a match applied.

ROUMANIA and SERVIA drink coffee prepared after either the Turkish or the French style, depending on the class of the drinker and where it is served. Substitutes are numerous.

In SPAIN and PORTUGAL the French type of cafe flourishes as in Italy. In Madrid, some delightful cafes are to be found around the Puerto del Sol, where coffee and chocolate are the favorite drinks. The coffee is made by the drip process, and is served in French fashion.

_Coffee Manners and Customs in North America_

The introduction of coffee and tea into North America effected a great change in the meal-time beverages of the people. Malt beverages had been succeeded by alcoholic spirits and by cider. These in turn were supplanted by tea and coffee.

CANADA. In Canada, we find both French and English influences at work in the preparation and serving of the beverage; "Yankee" ideas also have entered from across the border. Some years back (about 1910) A. McGill, chief chemist of the Canadian Inland Revenue Department, suggested an improvement upon Baron von Liebig's method, whereby Canadians might obtain an ideal cup of coffee. It was to combine two well-known methods. One was to boil a quantity of ground coffee to get a maximum of body or soluble matter. The other was to percolate a similar quantity to get the needed caffeol. By combining the decoction and the infusion, a finished beverage rich in body and aroma might be had. Most Canadians continue to drink tea, however, although coffee consumption is increasing.

MEXICO. In Mexico, the natives have a custom peculiarly their own. The roasted beans are pounded to a powder in a cloth bag which is then immersed in a pot of boiling water and milk. The _vaquero_, however, pours boiling water on the powdered coffee in his drinking cup, and sweetens it with a brown sugar stick.

Among the upper classes in Mexico the following interesting method obtains for making coffee:

Roast one pound until the beans are brown inside. Mix with the roasted coffee one teaspoonful of butter, one of sugar, and a little brandy. Cover with a thick cloth. Cool for one hour; then grind. Boil one quart of water. When boiling, put in the coffee and remove from fire immediately. Let it stand a few hours, and strain through a flannel bag, and keep in a stone jar until required for use; then heat quantity required.

UNITED STATES. In no country has there been so marked an improvement in coffee making as in the United States. Although in many parts, the national beverage is still indifferently prepared, the progress made in recent years has been so great that the friends of coffee are hopeful that before long it may be said truly that coffee making in America is a national honor and no longer the national disgrace that it was in the past.

Already, in the more progressive homes, and in the best hotels and restaurants, the coffee is uniformly good, and the service all that it should be. The American breakfast cup is a food-beverage because of the additions of milk or cream and sugar; and unlike Europe, this same generous cup serves again as a necessary part of the noonday and evening meals for most people.

The important and indispensable part that sugar plays in the make-up of the American cup of coffee was ably set forth by Fred Mason,[372] vice-president of the American Sugar Refining Co., when he said:

The coffee cup and the sugar bowl are inseparable table companions. Most of us did not realize this until the war came, with its attendant restrictions on everything we did, and we found that the sugar bowl had disappeared from all public eating places. No longer could we make an unlimited number of trips to the sugar bowl to sweeten our coffee; but we had to be content with what was doled out to us with scrupulous care--a quantity so small at times that it gave only a hint of sweetness to our national beverage.

Then it was that we really appreciated how indispensable the proper amount of sugar was to a good, savory cup of coffee, and we missed it as much as we would seasoning from certain cooked foods. Secretly we consoled ourselves with the promise that if the day ever came when sugar bowls made their appearance once more, filled temptingly with the sweet granules that were "gone but not forgotten," we should put an extra lump or an additional spoonful of sugar into our coffee to help us forget the joyless war days.

Since sugar is so necessary to our enjoyment of this popular beverage, it is obvious that a considerable part of all the sugar we consume must find its way into the national coffee cup. The stupendous amount of 40,000,000,000 cups of coffee is consumed in this country each year. Taking two teaspoonfuls or two lumps as a fair average per cup, we find that about 800,000,000 pounds of sugar, almost one-tenth of our total annual consumption, are required to sweeten Uncle Sam's coffee cup. This is specially significant when one considers that, with the single exception of Australia, the United States consumes more sugar per capita than any country on earth.

Sugar adds high food value to the stimulative virtues of coffee. The beverage itself stimulates the mental and physical powers, while the sugar it contains is fuel for the body and furnishes it with energy. Sugar is such a concentrated food that the amount used by the average person in two cups of coffee is enough to furnish the system with more energy than could be derived from 40 oysters on the half-shell.

Since prohibition, the average citizen is drinking one hundred more cups of coffee a year than he did in the old days; and a good part of the increase is attributed to newly formed habits of drinking coffee between meals, at soda fountains, in tea and coffee shops, at hotels, and even in the homes. In other words, the increase is due to coffee drinking that directly takes the place of malt and spirituous liquors. There have come into being the hotel coffee room; the custom of afternoon coffee drinking; and free coffee-service in many factories, stores, and offices.

In colonial days, must or ale first gave way to tea, and then to coffee as a breakfast beverage. The Boston "tea party" clinched the case for coffee; but in the meantime, coffee was more or less of an after-dinner function, or a between-meals drink, as in Europe. In Washington's time, dinner was usually served at three o'clock in the afternoon, and at informal dinner parties the company "sat till sunset--then coffee."

In the early part of the nineteenth century, coffee became firmly intrenched as the one great American breakfast beverage; and its security in this position would seem to be unassailable for all time.

Today, all classes in the United States begin and end the day with coffee. In the home, it is prepared by boiling, infusion or steeping, percolation, and filtration; in the hotels and restaurants, by infusion, percolation, and filtration. The best practise favors true percolation (French drip), or filtration.

Steeping coffee in American homes (an English heirloom) is usually performed in a china or earthenware jug. The ground coffee has boiling water poured upon it until the jug is half full. The infusion is stirred briskly. Next, the jug is filled by pouring in the remainder of the boiling water, the infusion is again stirred, then permitted to settle, and finally is poured through a strainer or filter cloth before serving.

When a pumping percolator or a double glass filtration device is used, the water may be cold or boiling at the beginning as the maker prefers. Some wet the coffee with cold water before starting the brewing process.

For genuine percolator, or drip coffee, French and Austrian china drip pots are mostly employed. The latest filtration devices are described in