COFFEE. 
415 
face falls to the bottom on slightly stirring it. This method gives a very aromatic 
coffee, but one containing little extract. 
Boiling , as is the custom in the East, yields excellent coffee. The powder is put on 
the fire in cold water, which is allowed merely to boil up a few seconds. The fine par¬ 
ticles of coffee are drunk with the beverage. If boiled long, the aromatic parts are vo¬ 
latilized, and the coffee is then rich in extract, but poor in aroma. 
As the best method, I adopt the following, which is a union of the 2nd and the 
3rd:— 
The usual quantities both of coffee and water are to be retained ; a tin measure con¬ 
taining half an ounce of green berries, when filled with roasted ones, is generally suffi¬ 
cient for two small cups of coffee of moderate strength, or one, so-called, large breakfast 
cup (one pound of green berries, equal to 16 ounces, yielding after roasting 24 tin mea¬ 
sures [of 4 ounce] for 48 small cups of coffee). 
With three-fourths of the coffee to be employed, after being ground, the water is 
made to boil for ten or fifteen minutes. The one quarter of the coffee which has been 
kept back is then flung in, and the vessel immediately withdrawn from the fire, covered 
over, and allowed to stand for five or six minutes. In order that the powder on the surface 
may fall to the bottom, it is stirred round; the deposit takes place, and the coffee 
poured off is ready for use. In order to separate the dregs more completely, the coffee 
may be passed through a clean cloth ; but generally this is not necessary, and often pre¬ 
judicial to the pure flavour of the beverage. 
The first boiling gives the strength, the second addition the flavour. The water 
does not dissolve of the aromatic substances more than the fourtn part contained in the 
roasted coffee. 
The beverage, when ready, ought to be of a brown-black colour: untranspaient it 
always is, somewhat like chocolate thinned with water 5 and this want of clearness in 
coffee so prepared does not come from the fine grounds, but from a peculiar iat resem¬ 
bling butter, about 12 per cent, of which the berries contain, and which, if over-roasted, 
is partly destroyed. 
In the other methods of making coffee, more than the half of the valuable parts of the 
berries remains in the “ grounds,” and is lost. 
To judge as favourably of my coffee as I do myself, its taste is not to be compared 
with that of the ordinary beverage, but rather the good effects might be taken into con¬ 
sideration which my coffee has on the organism. Many persons, too, who connect the 
idea of strength or concentration with a dark or black colour, fancy my coffee to be thin 
and weak, but these were at once inclined more favourably directly I gave it a dark co¬ 
lour 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, 
however, which has not the flavour of the berry is no coffee, Dut an artificial beverage, for 
which many other things may be substituted at pleasure. Hence it comes that if to the 
decoction 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 wnat real tea is 
iike. 7 . 
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 pro¬ 
ducts 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 enjoyment 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 pow¬ 
dered form, and its aromatic properties preserved by the following processOne 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 wnole is 
then to be spread out in the air to dry. The sugar locks up the volatile parts of the 
