COFFEE. 
413 
The steaming, roasting, and boiling which were going on there excited in me the 
greatest interest, and I could uninterruptedly watch the process of roasting a joint from 
the first when it was put raw on the spit, till the consummating moment when the fire 
had imparted to it a rich brown covering and of sweetest savour. 
I observed how the roast veal was sprinkled with salt, the capons wrapped in slices of 
bacon; nothing escaped my eager boyish attention. 
Hence I have retained a taste for cooking, and in leisure hours occupy myself with 
the mysteries of the kitchen; with the preparation of articles of human food, and all 
thereto belonging ; in which are not unfrequently included matters of which chemistry 
knows next to nothing. 
Young chemists do not devote their attention to such things, inasmuch as they are 
little fitted to afford proof of their skill and ingenuity, or to found a claim to recog¬ 
nition in the domain of science. It therefore is left for the older ones to do so. 
On the best method of preparing our common beverage, coffee, the opinions both of 
cooks and connoisseurs considerably diverge; and the difficulty of a decision can fail to 
be appreciated by him who knows that our tinmen and other artificers are yearly 
adding to the improvement of the half-hundred biggins or coffee-pots which we already 
possess. 
As my recipe for the preparation of coffee threatens to make all these inventions un¬ 
necessary, I risk, of course, making all manufacturers, as such, my adversaries. 
I appeal, however, to the impartiality of those who drink my coffee, all of whom I 
hope to have on my side. 
So much has already been written about the mental influence of tea and coffee 
upon our modern society and civilization, that it is useless to dwell on it more particu¬ 
larly here. 
But this is certain, that Anne Boleyn must have risen from a breakfast of half a pound 
of bacon and a quart of beer (mentioned by her in one of her letters) with very different 
sensations as well as sentiments from those she would have had, if the meal had con¬ 
sisted only of a cup of coffee or tea with some bread-and-butter and an egg. 
I also pass over unnoticed the national economical importance of coffee, and will 
merely say a few words on the influence which coffee has had on modern warfare. 
In the first Schleswig-Holstein and the last Italian campaign the introduction of 
coffee very materially contributed to improve the general health of the German and 
French soldier; and I am assured (by Captain Pfeufer, of the Sanitary Commission in 
the Bavarian army) that since the use of coffee in the Bavarian army as beverage for the 
men, the numbers of soldiers on a march unable to proceed has, in comparison with for¬ 
merly, very considerably diminished,—so much so, indeed, that sometimes not a man is 
ill; and this, too, when the distances have been great and the weather unfavourable. 
And Julius Froebel relates (‘ Seven Years in Central America,’ p. 226), that for the 
men accompanying the great trading caravans in Central America, coffee is an indispen¬ 
sable necessity :—“Brandy is only taken as a medicine, but coffee, on the contrary, is an 
indispensable article, and is drunk twice a day, and in large quantities. . The refreshing 
and strengthening effect of the drink under great toil, in heat and in cold, in rain or dry, is 
extraordinary.” 
As is well known, the English are masters in the preparation of tea. In preparing 
coffee, the Germans are, so they assert, greater adepts. It is certain that more coffee is 
drunk in Germany than tea. 
The German savant especially prefers coffee to tea, which, perhaps, is oecause of his 
habits, and of the different effect of the two beverages on the. body. 
Tea acts directly on the stomach, whose movements sometimes can be so much aug¬ 
mented by it, that strong tea, if taken fasting, inclines to vomiting. 
Coffee, on the contrary, furthers the peristaltic movement downwards ; and, therefore, 
the German man of letters, more accustomed to a sitting life, looks on a cup. of coffee, 
without milk and assisted by a cigar, as a very acceptable means of assisting certain 
organic processes. 
For the same reason, so it is said, Russian ladies have become patronesses of coffee and 
tobacco. 
These remarks prove sufficiently that the preparation of a beverage possessing in the 
highest degree the above valuable qualities, cannot be without interest. 
I was originally led to my attempts in this matter by the intention to obtain an ex- 
