COFFEE. 
17 
or black colour, fancy my coffee to be tliin and weak, but 
these were at once inclined more favourably directly I gave it 
a dark colour by means of burnt sugar, or by adding some 
substitute. 
The real flavour of coffee is so little known to most persons 
that many who drank my coffee for the first time doubted of 
its goodness, because it tasted of the berries. A coffee, how- 
ever, which has not the flavour of the berry is no coffee, but 
an artificial beverage, for which many other things may be 
substituted at pleasure. Hence it comes that if to the de- 
coction made from roasted chicory, carrots, or beetroot, the 
slightest quantity of coffee be added, few persons detect the 
difference. This accounts for the great diffusion of each 
such substitute. A dark mixture, with an empyreumatical 
taste, most people fancy to be coffee. For tea there are no 
substitutes, because everybody knows what real tea is like. 
Heating qualities have generally been attributed to coffee, 
and for this reason it is avoided by many people : however, 
these heating qualities belong to the volatile products called 
forth by the destruction of the soluble parts of the berries 
in the process of roasting. Coffee prepared in my manner is 
not heating, and I have found that it may be taken after 
dinner without disturbing the digestion ; a circumstance 
which, with me at least, always takes place after the enjoy- 
ment of strongly-roasted coffee. 
For special cases, such as journeys and marches, where it 
is impossible to be burdened with the necessary machines for 
roasting and grinding, coffee may be carried in a powdered 
form, and its aromatic properties preserved by the following 
process : — One pound of the roasted berries are reduced to 
powder and immediately wetted with a syrup of sugar, obtained 
by pouring on three ounces of sugar two ounces of water, 
and letting them stand a few minutes. When the powder is 
thoroughly wetted with the syrup, two ounces of finely- 
powdered sugar are to be added, mixed well with it, and the 
whole is then to be spread out in the air to dry. The sugar 
locks up the volatile parts of the coffee, so that when it is 
dry they cannot escape. If coffee is now to be made, cold 
■water is to be poured over a certain quantity of the powder 
and made to boil. Ground coffee prepared in this way, and 
which lay exposed to the air for one month, yielded, on being 
boiled, as good a beverage as one made of freshly-roasted 
berries. 
VOL. v. — KO. XVIII. 
c 
