CULINARY HONOUR.*
THE English are reproached in foreign countries with making, under the name of coffee, a most villainous and painful black
broth. We will not take care to buy the berry newly roasted, we will not grind it in small quantities immediately before use, and, worst horror of all, we keep to the traditional method of putting ground coffee in a pan and boiling it. Mr. Ukers has been seventeen years in gathering the material for his treatise. He has had an army of research workers in the principal museums and libraries of Europe ; and he can now speak with authority upon everything connected with coffee.
A man who has read his book will no longer be able to plead ignorance ; if he still prefers an unwholesome, odourless, thick and bitter decoction, then he is plainly convicted of perversion in taste, and we must look to the younger generation to restore our country's good name.
The book is well written, well printed and profusely illus- trated. The price puts it beyond the means of an ordinary householder, but we wish that a chained copy could be set in all places of general concourse. Coffee has a large part in the enjoyment of life, and for most people could, without evil effects, have a much larger part. The King of the Belgians,' we learn, takes a cup of coffee before breakfast, after breakfast,
at his noon-day meal, in the afternoon, after dinner, and again in the evening. Most readers will be interested mainly in Mr. Ukers's account of the history and literature of coffee, and in his rules for its preparation. It was first reported in Eng-
land in the sixteenth century, and was then said to be a warm water "which will soon intoxicate the braine like our metheg- lin " ; but already in the early seventeenth century coffee- houses were being erected and the drink was recommended as fortifying the heat of the stomach, making the heart light- some, and curing the stone, all running humours, hypochon- dria, consumption, dropsy, scurvy, gout and the king's evil.
Broadsides were written for and against its use. The first notable one was published in 1663, and began :—
"For men and Christians to turn Turks and think T'excuse their crime because 'tis in their drink Is more than magic, and does plainly tell Coffee's extraction has its heart from hell. Pure English Apes I Ye may for ought I 'mow, Would it but mode, learn to cat Spiders too."
It was defended as vigorously in A Brief Description of the Excellent Virtues of that Sober and Wholesome Drink, called Coffee, whose author says :— " When the sweet Poison of the treacherous Grape, Had Acted on the world a General Rape ; Drowning our very Reason and our Souls In such deep Seas of large o'reflowing Bowls, Then Heaven in Pity, to Effect our Cure And stop the Raging of the Calenture, First sent amongst us this All-healing-Berry: At once to make us both Sober and Merry.'
Swift, Pope, Cowper and Lamb were fervent in the praise of coffee ; Leigh Hunt, as we should expect, was rapturous.
To prepare coffee well needs no elaborate instruments and no additional labour ; but there must be some knowledge of the requisites of good coffee. The valuable components of coffee are its volatile aromatic oils. These are produced when the coffee is roasted and set free when it is ground. It is advisable in grinding coffee to break up the berry in fragments as small as possible in order that the oils may immediately be taken up into the water. If water is left for some time on the grounds it absorbs other and less desirable compounds and the oils evaporate ; thus the coffee becomes sour and muddy. The best coffee is made neither by decoction (that is, by boiling) nor by infusion (that is, by letting the hot wate: stand on the grounds), but by some method of filtration. The easiest method of filtering is to pour the boiling, or almost boiling, water through a muslin bag containing the coffee- grounds. It is important that the water should be poured through only once. Mr. Ukers's own blend is composed of
• All About Coffee. By William H. Ulcers. New York : The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company. L3 105. net.]
half Medellin Bogota, one quarter Mandheling Java and one quarter Mocha. Most connoisseurs still cling to the good old blend of two-thirds Java to one-third Mocha.
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