398 DOMESTIC ECONOMY. [Chap. IV. 



Cocoa shells are apt to be musty from long keeping. Never purchase a 

 largo quantity until you have tried a sample and proved it fresh and sweet. 

 Cracked cocoa is generally tlie best. Some that is carefully put up in 

 papers keeps well. Chocolate is often adulterated so that it makes a nau- 

 seous beverage. Do not buy Init a single cake until you prove it good. 

 Both these articles are made from the cocoa beans, which grow upon small 

 trees, cultivated for the purpose in Central America and other tropical lati- 

 tudes. The beans are bitter and astringent, and arc; roasted like coffee to 

 prepare them for use. They contain much more oil or fatty matter than 

 coffee berries. It is rated in an analysis by Lampadius over 53 per cent, of 

 the stibstance. The substance containing the aroma of the bean is given at 

 16.70 per cent. The shells are the dried fleshy pulp that surrounds the 

 beans in the pods. 



The cracked cocoa is the broken roasted beans. Chocolate is made of the 

 beans, ground with hot rollers, and made into a paste with sugar, and sea- 

 soned witli vanilla and spices, and if not adulterated, makes a wholesome 

 beverage, but it is next to impossible to find chocolate that is pure. 



432. folTce, as it comes to us, is the half of a dried bean which was inclosed 

 in a pulpy berry that grew somewhat like a cherry upon a tree naturally ten 

 to thirty feet high, but kept pruned low in coffee plantations, wliich are to 

 be found in most tropical countries. The best variety of coffee comes from 

 ilocha, in Arabia. The berry is small and round, and the odor and flavor 

 very agreeable ; it bears a high price. And next to it is the Java coffee, a 

 large, jiale j-ellow berry. The Brazilian, commonly called Kio coffee, is the 

 sort in most common use. The berry is of medium size, greenish color, and 

 appears rusted with specks of gray. It is not a fine flavored coft'ee, having 

 a good deal of acridness, but it is in favor with farmers generally, because 

 " it goes farther than mild cofiee." All coffee improves by age if kej)t dry. 

 It should be roasted very evenly, of a light brown color, and used very soon 

 afterward^ as it loses value every day after it is roasted, and after it is 

 ground it will become almost worthless by a few days' exjiosure to the air. 

 Koasted coffee should always be carefully kept in a closed canister, separate 

 from all food, as it rapidly absorbs odors. Eoasting coffee in a room will 

 always disinfect it of bad effluvia. It also imparts its own odor to other 

 things, such as tea, butter, and bread. 



In roasting coffee, first dry it gently in an open pan until it changes 

 color, and then cover the pan and scorch it rapidly without charrin* a grain. 

 The term, " burning coft'ee," implies a great error in its preparation, or ig- 

 norance of its character. Hoasting renders the grains of coft'ee brittle, and 

 makes the matter that it is desirable to extract more soluble in hot water, 

 and produces as great a cliemical change as fire does upon corn meal or any 

 other article of food. 



The peculiar aroma of coffee as it comes to the table, which gives it the 

 flavor and stimulating effect ascribed to it, is never found in coffee grains 

 before they are roasted. But if it is humt, this flavor is destroyed, and 



