CupScout

_How coffee is roasted, prepared, and served in all the leading
civilized countries–The Arabian coffee ceremony–The present-day
coffee houses of Turkey–Twentieth-century improvements in Europe
and the United States_

Coffee manners and customs have shown little change in the Orient in the
six hundred-odd years since the coffee drink was discovered by Sheik
Omar in Arabia. As a beverage for western peoples, however, and more
particularly in America, there have been many improvements in making and
serving it.

A brief survey of the coffee conventions and coffee service in the
principal countries where coffee has become a fixed item in the dietary
is presented here, with a view to show how different peoples have
adapted the universal drink to their national needs and preferences.

To proceed in alphabetical order, and beginning with Africa, coffee
drinking is indulged in largely in Abyssinia, Algeria, Egypt, Portuguese
East Africa, and the Union of South Africa.

_Coffee Manners and Customs in Africa_

In Abyssinia and Somaliland, among the native population, the most
primitive methods of coffee making still obtain. Here the wandering
Galla still mix their pulverized coffee beans with fats as a food
ration, and others of the native tribes favor the _kisher_, or beverage
made from the toasted coffee hulls. An hour’s boiling produces a
straw-colored decoction, of a slightly sweetish taste. Where the Arabian
customs have taken root, the drink is prepared from the roasted beans
after the Arabian and Turkish method. The white inhabitants usually
prepare and serve the beverage as in the homeland; so that it is
possible to obtain it after the English, French, German, Greek, or
Italian styles. Adaptations of the French sidewalk café, and of the
Turkish coffee house, may be seen in the larger towns.

In the equatorial provinces of Egypt, and in Uganda, the natives eat the
raw berries; or first cook them in boiling water, dry them in the sun,
and then eat them. It is a custom to exchange coffee beans in friendly
greeting.

Individual earthen vessels for making coffee, painted red and yellow,
are made by some of the native tribes in Abyssinia, and usually
accompany disciples of Islam when they journey to Mecca, where the
vessels find a ready sale among the pilgrims, most of whom are
coffee-devotees.

Turkish and Arabian coffee customs prevail in Algeria and Egypt,
modified to some extent by European contact. The Moorish cafés of Cairo,
Tunis, and Algiers have furnished inspiration and copy for writers,
artists, and travelers for several centuries. They change little with
the years. The _mazagran_–sweetened cold coffee to which water or ice
has been added–originated in Algeria. It probably took its name from
the fortress of the same name reserved to France by the treaty of the
Tafna in 1837. It is said that the French colonial troops were first
served with a drink made from coffee syrup and cold water on marches
near Mazagran, formerly spelled Masagran. Upon their return to the
French capital, they introduced the idea, with the added fillip of
service in tall glasses, in their favorite cafés, where it became known
as _café mazagran_. Variants are coffee syrup with seltzer, and with
hot water. “This fashion of serving coffee in glasses”, says Jardin,
“has no _raison d’être_, and nothing can justify abandoning the cup for
coffee.”

[Illustration: MOORISH COFFEE HOUSE IN ALGIERS]

In the principal streets and public squares of any town in Algeria it is
a common sight to find a group of Arabs squatting about a portable
stove, and a table on which cups are in readiness to receive the boiling
coffee. The thirsty Arab approaches the dealer, and for a modest sum he
gets his drink and goes his way; unless he prefers to go inside the
café, where he may get several drinks and linger over them, sitting on a
mat with his legs crossed and smoking his _chibouque_. Indeed, this is a
typical scene throughout the Near East, where sheds or coffee
tents–sketches of the more pretentious coffee houses–coffee shops, and
itinerant coffee-venders are to be met at almost every turn.

In an unpublished work, Baron Antoine Rousseau and Th. Roland de Bussy
have the following description of a typical Moorish café at Algiers:

We entered without ceremony into a narrow deep cave, decorated with
the name of the café. On the right and on the left, along its
length, were two benches covered with mats; notched cups, tongs, a
box of brown sugar, all placed near a small stove, completed the
furniture of the place. In the evening, the dim light from a lamp
hanging from the ceiling shows the indistinct figures of a double
row of natives listening to the nasal cadences of a band who play a
pizzicato accompaniment on small three-stringed violins.

Here, as in Europe, the cafés are the providential rendezvous for
idlers and gossips, exchanges for real-estate brokers and players
at cards.

Europeans recently arrived frequent them particularly. Some go only
to satisfy their curiosity; others out of an inborn scorn for the
customs of civilization. They go to sleep as Frenchmen, they awake
Mohammedans! Their love for “Turkish art” only leads them to haunt
the native shops and to affect oriental poses.

If we quit for a moment the interior of the city to follow between
two hedgerows of mastics or aloes, one of those capricious paths
which lead one, now up to the summit of a hill, now to the depths
of some ravine, very soon the tones of a rustic flute, the
modulations of the _Djou-wak_, will betray some cool and peaceful
retreat, some rustic café, easily recognized by its facade, pierced
with large openings. To my eyes, nothing equals the charm of these
little buildings scattered here and there along the edges of a
stream, sheltered under the thick foliage, and constantly enlivened
by the coming and going of the husbandmen of the neighborhood.

Certain old Moors from the neighboring districts, fleeing the
noises of the city, are the faithful habitués of these agreeable
retreats. Here they instal themselves at dawn, and know how to
enjoy every moment of their day with tales of their travels and
youthful adventures, and many a legend for which their imagination
takes all the responsibility.

[Illustration: COFFEE HOUSE IN CAIRO]

[Illustration: HULLING COFFEE IN ADEN, ARABIA]

Gérôme’s painting of the “Coffee House at Cairo,” which hangs in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gives one a good idea of the
atmosphere of the Egyptian café. The preparation and service is modified
Turkish-Arabian. The coffee is ground to a powder, boiled in an _ibrik_
with the addition of sugar, and served frothing in small cups.
Story-tellers, singers, and dancers furnish amusement as of yore. The
Oriental customs have not changed much in this respect. Trolley cars,
victorias, and taxis may have replaced the donkeys in the new sections
of the larger Egyptian cities; but in old Alexandria and Cairo, the
approach to the native coffee house is as dirty and as odorous as ever.
Coffee is always served in all business transactions. Nowadays, the
Egyptian women chew gum and the men smoke cigarettes, French department
stores offer bargain sales, and the hotels advertise tea dances; but the
Egyptian coffee drink is still the tiny cup of coffee grounds and sugar
that it was three hundred years ago, when sugar was first used to
sweeten coffee in Cairo.

[Illustration: COFFEE SERVICE AT A BARBER SHOP IN CAIRO]

In Portuguese East Africa, the natives prepare and drink coffee after
the approved African native fashion, but the white population follows
European customs. In the Union of South Africa, Dutch and English
customs prevail in making and serving the beverage.

_Manners and Customs in Asia_

“Arabia the Happy” deserves to be called “the Blest”, if only for its
gift of coffee to the world. Here it was that the virtues of the drink
were first made known; here the plant first received intensive
cultivation. After centuries of habitual use of the beverage, we find
the Arabs, now as then, one of the strongest and noblest races of the
world, mentally superior to most of them, generally healthy, and growing
old so gracefully that the faculties of the mind seldom give way sooner
than those of the body. They are an ever living earnest of the
healthfulness of coffee.

The Arabs are proverbially hospitable; and the symbol of their
hospitality for a thousand years has been the great drink of
democracy–coffee. Their very houses are built around the cup of human
brotherhood. William Wallace,[366] writing on Arabian philosophy,
manners, and customs, says:

The principal feature of an Arab house is the _kahwah_ or coffee
room. It is a large apartment spread with mats, and sometimes
furnished with carpets and a few cushions. At one end is a small
furnace or fireplace for preparing coffee. In this room the men
congregate; here guests are received, and even lodged; women rarely
enter it, except at times when strangers are unlikely to be
present. Some of these apartments are very spacious and supported
by pillars; one wall is usually built transversely to the compass
direction of the _Ka’ba_ (sacred shrine of Mecca). It serves to
facilitate the performance of prayer by those who may happen to be
in the _kahwah_ at the appointed times.

Several rounds of coffee, without milk or sugar, but sometimes flavored
with cardamom seeds, are served to the guest at first welcome; and
coffee may be had at all hours between meals, or whenever the occasion
demands it. Always the beans are freshly roasted, pounded, and boiled.
The Arabs average twenty-five to thirty cups (findjans) a day.
Everywhere in Arabia there are to be found cafés where the beverage may
be bought.

[Illustration: SHIPS OF THE DESERT LADEN WITH COFFEE, ARABIA]

Those of the lower classes are thronged throughout the day. In front,
there is generally a porch or bench where one may sit. The rooms,
benches, and little chairs lack the cleanliness and elegance of the
one-time luxurious “_caffinets_” of cities like Damascus and
Constantinople, but the drink is the same. There is not in all Yemen a
single market town or hamlet where one does not find upon some simple
hut the legend, “Shed for drinking coffee”.

The Arab drinks water before taking coffee, but never after it. “Once in
Syria”, says a traveler, “I was recognized as a foreigner because I
asked for water just after I had taken my coffee. ‘If you belonged
here’, said the waiter, ‘you would not spoil the taste of coffee in your
mouth by washing it away with water.’”

It is an adventure to partake of coffee prepared in the open, at a
roadside inn, or khan, in Arabia by an _araba_, or diligence driver. He
takes from his saddle-bag the ever-present coffee kit, containing his
supply of green beans, of which he roasts just sufficient on a little
perforated iron plate over an open fire, deftly taking off the beans,
one at a time, as they turn the right color. Then he pounds them in a
mortar, boils his water in the long, straight-handled open boiler, or
_ibrik_ (a sort of brass mug or _jezveh_), tosses in the coffee powder,
moving the vessel back and forth from the fire as it boils up to the
rim; and, after repeating this maneuver three times, pours the contents
foaming merrily into the little egg-like serving cups.

_Cafée sultan_, or _kisher_, the original decoction, made from dried and
toasted coffee hulls, is still being drunk in parts of Arabia and
Turkey.

Coffee in Arabia is part of the ritual of business, as in other Oriental
countries. Shop-keepers serve it to the customer before the argument
starts. Recently, a New York barber got some valuable publicity because
he regaled his customers with tea and music. It was “old stuff”. The
Arabian and Turkish barber shops have been serving coffee, tobacco, and
sweetmeats to their customers for centuries.

[Illustration: AN ARABIAN COFFEE HOUSE]

For a faithful description of the ancient coffee ceremony of the Arabs,
which, with slight modification, is still observed in Arabian homes, we
turn to Palgrave. First he describes the dwelling and then the ceremony:

The K’hawah was a large oblong hall, about twenty feet in
height, fifty in length, and sixteen, or thereabouts, in breadth;
the walls were coloured in a rudely decorative manner with brown
and white wash, and sunk here and there into small triangular
recesses, destined to the reception of books, though of these
Ghafil at least had no over-abundance, lamps, and other such like
objects. The roof of timber, and flat; the floor was strewed with
fine clean sand, and garnished all round alongside of the walls
with long strips of carpet, upon which cushions, covered with faded
silk, were disposed at suitable intervals. In poorer houses felt
rugs usually take the place of carpets.

In one corner, namely, that furthest removed from the door, stood a
small fireplace, or, to speak more exactly, furnace, formed of a
large square block of granite, or some other hard stone, about
twenty inches each way; this is hollowed inwardly into a deep
funnel, open above, and communicating below with a small horizontal
tube or pipe-hole, through which the air passes, bellows-driven, to
the lighted charcoal piled up on a grating about half-way inside
the cone. In this manner the fuel is soon brought to a white heat,
and the water in the coffee-pot placed upon the funnel’s mouth is
readily brought to boil. The system of coffee furnaces is universal
in Djowf and Djebel Shomer, but in Nejed itself, and indeed in
whatever other yet more distant regions of Arabia I visited to the
south and east, the furnace is replaced by an open fireplace
hollowed in the ground floor, with a raised stone border, and
dog-irons for the fuel, and so forth, like what may be yet seen in
Spain. This diversity of arrangement, so far as Arabia is
concerned, is due to the greater abundance of firewood in the
south, whereby the inhabitants are enabled to light up on a larger
scale; whereas throughout the Djowf and Djebel Shomer wood is very
scarce, and the only fuel at hand is bad charcoal, often brought
from a considerable distance, and carefully husbanded.

[Illustration: BREWING THE GUEST'S COFFEE IN A MOHAMMEDAN HOME]

This corner of the K’hawah is also the place of distinction
whence honour and coffee radiate by progressive degrees round the
apartment, and hereabouts accordingly sits the master of the house
himself, or the guests whom he more especially delighteth to
honour.

On the broad edge of the furnace or fireplace, as the case may be,
stands an ostentatious range of copper coffee-pots, varying in size
and form. Here in the Djowf their make resembles that in vogue at
Damascus; but in Nejed and the eastern districts they are of a
different and much more ornamental fashioning, very tall and
slender, with several ornamental circles and mouldings in elegant
relief, besides boasting long beak-shaped spouts and high steeples
for covers. The number of these utensils is often extravagantly
great. I have seen a dozen at a time in a row by one fireside,
though coffee-making requires, in fact, only three at most. Here in
the Djowf five or six are considered to be the thing; for the south
this number must be doubled; all this to indicate the riches and
munificence of their owner, by implying the frequency of his guests
and the large amount of coffee that he is in consequence obliged to
have made for them.

Behind this stove sits, at least in wealthy houses, a black slave,
whose name is generally a diminutive in token of familiarity or
affection; in the present case it was Soweylim, the diminutive of
Salim. His occupation is to make and pour out the coffee; where
there is no slave in the family, the master of the premises
himself, or perhaps one of his sons, performs that hospitable duty;
rather a tedious one, as we shall soon see.

We enter. On passing the threshold it is proper to say,
“_Bismillah_, _i.e._, in the name of God;” not to do so would be
looked on as a bad augury alike for him who enters and for those
within. The visitor next advances in silence, till on coming about
half-way across the room, he gives to all present, but looking
specially at the master of the house, the customary
“_Es-salamu’aleykum_,” or “Peace be with you,” literally, “on you.”
All this while every one else in the room has kept his place,
motionless, and without saying a word. But on receiving the salaam
of etiquette, the master of the house rises, and if a strict
Wahhabee, or at any rate desirous of seeming such, replies with
the full-length traditionary formula. “_W’ ‘aleykumu-s-salamu,
w’rahmat’ Ullahi w’barakátuh_,” which is, as every one knows, “And
with (or, on) you be peace, and the mercy of God, and his
blessings.” But should he happen to be of anti-Wahhabee
tendencies the odds are that he will say “_Marhaba_,” or “_Ahlan w’
sahlan_,” _i.e._, “welcome” or “worthy, and pleasurable,” or the
like; for of such phrases there is an infinite, but elegant
variety.

All present follow the example thus given, by rising and saluting.
The guest then goes up to the master of the house, who has also
made a step or two forwards, and places his open hand in the palm
of his host’s, but without grasping or shaking, which would hardly
pass for decorous, and at the same time each repeats once more his
greeting, followed by the set phrases of polite enquiry, “How are
you?” “How goes the world with you?” and so forth, all in a tone of
great interest, and to be gone over three or four times, till one
or other has the discretion to say “_El hamdu l’illah_,” “Praise
be to God”, or, in equivalent value, “all right,” and this is a
signal for a seasonable diversion to the ceremonious interrogatory.

The guest then, after a little contest of courtesy, takes his seat
in the honoured post by the fireplace, after an apologetical
salutation to the black slave on the one side, and to his nearest
neighbour on the other. The best cushions and newest looking
carpets have been of course prepared for his honoured weight. Shoes
or sandals, for in truth the latter alone are used in Arabia, are
slipped off on the sand just before reaching the carpet, and there
they remain on the floor close by. But the riding stick or wand,
the inseparable companion of every true Arab, whether Bedouin or
townsman, rich or poor, gentle or simple, is to be retained in the
hand, and will serve for playing with during the pauses of
conversation, like the fan of our great-grandmothers in their days
of conquest.

Without delay Soweylim begins his preparations for coffee. These
open by about five minutes of blowing with the bellows and
arranging the charcoal till a sufficient heat has been produced.
Next he places the largest of the coffee-pots, a huge machine, and
about two-thirds full of clear water, close by the edge of the
glowing coal-pit, that its contents may become gradually warm while
other operations are in progress. He then takes a dirty knotted rag
out of a niche in the wall close by, and having untied it, empties
out of it three or four handfuls of unroasted coffee, the which he
places on a little trencher of platted grass, and picks carefully
out any blackened grains, or other non-homologous substances,
commonly to be found intermixed with the berries when purchased in
gross; then, after much cleansing and shaking, he pours the grain
so cleansed into a large open iron ladle, and places it over the
mouth of the funnel, at the same time blowing the bellows and
stirring the grains gently round and round till they crackle,
redden, and smoke a little, but carefully withdrawing them from the
heat long before they turn black or charred, after the erroneous
fashion of Turkey and Europe; after which he puts them to cool a
moment on the grass platter.

He then sets the warm water in the large coffee-pot over the fire
aperture, that it may be ready boiling at the right moment, and
draws in close between his own trouserless legs a large stone
mortar, with a narrow pit in the middle, just enough to admit the
large stone pestle of a foot long and an inch and a half thick,
which he now takes in hand. Next, pouring the half-roasted berries
into the mortar, he proceeds to pound them, striking right into the
narrow hollow with wonderful dexterity, nor ever missing his blow
till the beans are smashed, but not reduced into powder. He then
scoops them out, now reduced to a sort of coarse reddish grit, very
unlike the fine charcoal dust which passes in some countries for
coffee, and out of which every particle of real aroma has long
since been burnt or ground.

After all these operations, each performed with as intense a
seriousness and deliberate nicety as if the welfare of the entire
Djowf depended on it, he takes a smaller coffee-pot in hand, fills
it more than half with hot water from the larger vessel, and then
shaking the pounded coffee into it, sets it on the fire to boil,
occasionally stirring it with a small stick as the water rises to
check the ebullition and prevent overflowing. Nor is the boiling
stage to be long or vehement: on the contrary, it is and should be
as light as possible. In the interim he takes out of another
rag-knot a few aromatic seeds called heyl, an Indian product, but
of whose scientific name I regret to be wholly ignorant, or a
little saffron, and after slightly pounding these ingredients,
throws them into the simmering coffee to improve its flavour, for
such an additional spicing is held indispensable in Arabia though
often omitted elsewhere in the East. Sugar would be a totally
unheard of profanation. Last of all, he strains off the liquor
through some fibres of the inner palm-bark placed for that purpose
in the jug-spout, and gets ready the tray of delicate
parti-coloured grass, and the small coffee cups ready for pouring
out. All these preliminaries have taken up a good half-hour.

Meantime we have become engaged in active conversation with our
host and his friends. But our Sherarat guide, Suleyman, like a true
Bedouin, feels too awkward when among townsfolk to venture on the
upper places, though repeatedly invited, and accordingly has
squatted down on the sand near the entrance. Many of Ghafil’s
relations are present; their silver-decorated swords proclaim the
importance of the family. Others, too, have come to receive us, for
our arrival, announced beforehand by those we had met at the
entrance pass, is a sort of event in the town; the dress of some
betokens poverty, others are better clad, but all have a very
polite and decorous manner. Many a question is asked about our
native land and town, that is to say, Syria and Damascus,
conformably to the disguise already adopted, and which it was
highly important to keep well up; then follow enquiries regarding
our journey, our business, what we have brought with us, about our
medicines, our goods and wares, etc., etc. From the very first it
is easy for us to perceive that patients and purchasers are likely
to abound. Very few travelling merchants, if any, visit the Djowf
at this time of year, for one must be mad, or next door to it, to
rush into the vast desert around during the heats of June and July;
I for one have certainly no intention of doing it again. Hence we
had small danger of competitors, and found the market almost at our
absolute disposal.

But before a quarter of an hour has passed, and while blacky is
still roasting or pounding his coffee, a tall thin lad, Ghafil’s
eldest son, appears, charged with a large circular dish,
grass-platted like the rest, and throws it with a graceful jerk on
the sandy floor close before us. He then produces a large wooden
bowl full of dates, bearing in the midst of the heap a cup full of
melted butter; all this he places on the circular mat, and says,
“_Semmoo_,” literally, “pronounce the Name”, of God, understood;
this means “set to work at it.” Hereon the master of the house
quits his place by the fireside and seats himself on the sand
opposite to us; we draw nearer to the dish, and four or five
others, after some respectful coyness, join the circle. Every one
then picks out a date or two from the juicy half-amalgamated mass,
dips them into the butter, and thus goes on eating till he has had
enough, when he rises and washes his hands.

By this time the coffee is ready, and Soweylim begins his round,
the coffee-pot in one hand; the tray and cups on the other. The
first pouring out he must in etiquette drink himself, by way of a
practical assurance that there is no “death in the pot;” the guests
are next served, beginning with those next the honourable fireside;
the master of the house receives his cup last of all. To refuse
would be a positive and unpardonable insult; but one has not much
to swallow at a time, for the coffee-cups, or finjans, are about
the size of a large egg-shell at most, and are never more than
half-filled. This is considered essential to good breeding, and a
brimmer would here imply exactly the reverse of what it does in
Europe; why it should be so I hardly know, unless perhaps the
rareness of cup-stands or “zarfs” (see Lane’s “Modern Egyptians”)
in Arabia, though these implements are universal in Egypt and
Syria, might render an over-full cup inconveniently hot for the
fingers that must grasp it without medium. Be that as it may, “fill
the cup for your enemy” is an adage common to all, Bedouins or
townsmen, throughout the Peninsula. The beverage itself is
singularly aromatic and refreshing, a real tonic, and very
different from the black mud sucked by the Levantine, or the watery
roast-bean preparations of France. When the slave or freeman,
according to circumstances, presents you with a cup, he never fails
to accompany it with a “_Semm’_,” “say the name of God,” nor must
you take it without answering “_Bismillah_.”

When all have been thus served, a second round is poured out, but
in inverse order, for the host this time drinks first, and the
guests last. On special occasions, a first reception, for instance,
the ruddy liquor is a third time handed round; nay, a fourth cup is
sometimes added. But all these put together do not come up to
one-fourth of what a European imbibes in a single draught at
breakfast.

[Illustration: NATIVE CAFÉ, HARAR, ABYSSINIA]

[Illustration: EARLY MANNER OF SERVING COFFEE, TEA AND CHOCOLATE

From a drawing in Dufour's _Traités Nouveaux et Curieux du Café, du The
et du Chocolat_]

For a more recent pen picture of coffee manners and customs in Arabia,
we turn to Charles M. Daughty’s “_Travels in Arabia Deserta_”[367]:

Hirfa ever demanded of her husband towards which part should “the
house” be built. “Dress the face”. Zeyd would answer, “to this
part”, showing her with his hands the south, for if his booth’s
face be all day turned to the hot sun there will come in fewer
young loitering and parasitical fellows that would be his
coffee-drinkers. Since the _sheukh_, or heads, alone receive their
tribes’ _surra_, it is not much that they should be to the arms [of
his] coffee-hosts. I have seen Zeyd avoid [them] as he saw them
approach, or even rise ungraciously upon such men’s presenting
themselves (the half of every booth, namely the men’s side, is at
all times open, and any enter there that will, in the free
desert), and they murmuring he tells them, _wellah_, his affairs do
call him forth, adieu; he must away to the _mejlis_; go they and
seek the coffee elsewhere. But were there any _sheykh_ with them, a
coffee lord, Zeyd could not honestly choose but abide and serve
them with coffee; and if he be absent himself, yet any _sheykhly_
man coming to a _sheykh’s_ tent, coffee must be made for him,
except he gently protest “_billah_, he would not drink.” Hirfa, a
_sheykh’s_ daughter and his nigh kinswoman, was a faithful mate to
Zeyd in all his sparing policy.

Our _menzil_ now standing, the men step over to Zeyd’s coffee-fire,
if the _sheykh_ be not gone forth to the _mejlis_ to drink his
mid-day cup there. A few gathered sticks are flung down beside the
hearth; with flint and steel one stoops and strikes fire in tinder,
he blows and cherishes those seeds of the cheerful flame in some
dry camel-dung, sets the burning shred under dry straws, and
powders over more dry camel-dung. As the fire kindles, the _sheykh_
reaches for his _dellàl_, coffee pots, which are carried in the
_fatya_, coffee-gear basket; this people of a nomad life bestow
each thing of theirs in a proper _beyt_; it would otherwise be lost
in their daily removings. One rises to go to fill up the pots at
the water-skins, or a bowl of water is handed over the curtain from
the woman’s side; the pot at the fire, Hirfa reaches over her
little palm-ful of green coffee berries…. These are roasted and
brayed; as all is boiling he sets out his little cups, _fenjeyl_
(for fenjeyn). When, with a pleasant gravity, he has unbuckled his
_gutia_ or cup-box, we see the nomad has not above three or four
fenjeyns, wrapt in a rusty clout, with which he scours them busily,
as if this should make his cups clean. The roasted beans are
pounded amongst Arabs with a magnanimous rattle–and (as all their
labor) rhythmical–in brass of the town, or an old wooden mortar,
gaily studded with nails, the work of some nomad smith. The water
bubbling in the small _dellàl_, he casts in his fine coffee powder,
_el-bunn_, and withdraws the pot to simmer a moment. From a knot in
his kerchief he takes then a head of cloves, a piece of cinnamon or
other spice, _bahar_, and braying these he casts their dust in
after. Soon he pours out some hot drops to essay his coffee; if the
taste be to his liking, making dexterously a nest of all the cups
in his hand, with pleasant clattering, he is ready to pour out for
all the company, and begins upon his right hand; and first, if such
be present, to any considerable _sheykh_ and principal persons. The
_fenjeyn kahwah_ is but four sips; to fill it up to a guest, as in
the northern towns, were among Bedouins an injury, and of such
bitter meaning, “This drink thou and depart.”

[Illustration: NUBIAN SLAVE GIRL WITH COFFEE SERVICE, PERSIA]

Then is often seen a contention in courtesy amongst them,
especially in any greater assemblies, who shall drink first. Some
man that receives the _fenjeyn_ in his turn will not drink yet–he
proffers it to one sitting in order under him, as to the more
honourable; but the other putting off with his hand will answer
_ebbeden_, “Nay, it shall never be, by Ullah! but do thou drink.”
Thus licensed, the humble man is despatched in three sips, and
hands up his empty _fenjeyn_. But if he have much insisted, by this
he opens his willingness to be reconciled with one not his friend.
That neighbor, seeing the company of coffee-drinkers watching him,
may with an honest grace receive the cup, and let it seem not
willingly; but an hard man will sometimes rebut the other’s gentle
proffer.

Some may have taken lower seats than becoming their _sheykhly_
blood, of which the nomads are jealous; entering untimely, they sat
down out of order, sooner than trouble all the company. A _sheykh_,
coming late and any business going forward, will often sit far out
in the assembly; and show himself a popular person in this kind of
honourable humility. The more inward in the booth is the higher
place; where also is, with the _sheykhs_, the seat of a stranger.
To sit in the loose circuit without and before the tent, is for the
common sort. A tribesman arriving presents himself at that part or
a little lower, where in the eyes of all men his pretension will be
well allowed; and in such observances of good nurture, is a nomad
man’s honour among his tribesmen. And this is nigh all that serves
the nomad for a conscience, namely, that which men will hold of
him. A poor person, approaching from behind, stands obscurely,
wrapped in his tattered mantle, with grave ceremonial, until those
sitting indolently before him in the sand shall vouchsafe to take
notice of him; then they rise unwillingly, and giving back enlarge
the coffee-circle to receive him. But if there arrive a _sheykh_, a
coffee-host, a richard amongst them of a few cattle, all the
coxcomb companions within will hail him with their pleasant
adulation _taad henneyi_, “Step thou up hither.”

The astute Fukara _sheukh_ surpass all men in their coffee-drinking
courtesy, and Zeyd himself was more than any large of this
gentlemen-like imposture: he was full of swaggering complacence and
compliments to an humbler person. With what suavity could he
encourage, and gently too compel a man, and rising himself yield
him parcel of another man’s room! In such fashions Zeyd showed
himself a bountiful great man, who indeed was the greatest niggard.
The cups are drunk twice about, each one sipping after other’s lips
without misliking; to the great coffee _sheykhs_ the cup may be
filled more times, but this is an adulation of the coffee-server.
There are some of the Fukara _sheukh_ so delicate Sybarites that of
those three bitter sips, to draw out all their joyance, twisting,
turning, and tossing again the cup, they could make ten. The
coffee-service ended, the grounds are poured out from the small
into the great store-pot that is reserved full of warm water; with
the bitter lye the nomads will make their next bever, and think
they spare coffee.

Here is an Arabian recipe[368] for making coffee as given by Kadhi
Hodhat, the best informed man of his time:

Tadj-Eddin-Aid-Almaknab-ben-Yacoub-Mekki Molki, chief of all the
cantons of Hedjaz, (May God have mercy on him!) I learned it when
once in his company at the time of the Holy Feasts…. He informed
me that nothing is more beneficial than to drink cold water before
coffee, because it lessens the dryness of the coffee and thus taken
it does not cause insomnia to the same degree. The poet did not
forget to explain this manner of taking coffee:

As with art ’tis prepared, one should drink it with art.
The mere commonplace drinks one absorbs with free heart;
But this–once with care from the bright flame removed,
And the lime set aside that its value has proved–
Take it first in deep draughts, meditative and slow,
Quit it now, now resume, thus imbibe with gusto;
While charming the palate it burns yet enchants,
In the hour of its triumph the virtue it grants
Penetrates every tissue; its powers condense.
Circulate cheering warmths, bring new life to each sense.
From the cauldron profound spiced aromas unseen
Mount to tease and delight your olfactories keen,
The while you inhale with felicity fraught,
The enchanting perfume that a zephyr has brought.

[Illustration: PERSIAN COFFEE SERVICE, 1737]

Gone are the “luxurious and magnificent” coffee houses of Constantinople
(if they ever existed–at least as we understand luxury and
magnificence) which first brought the beverage world-wide fame; such
_caffinets_ as the one pictured by Thomas Allom and described by the
Rev. Robert Walsh, in _Constantinople, Illustrated_:

The caffinet, or coffee-house, is something more splendid, and the
Turk expends all his notions of finery and elegance on this, his
favorite place of indulgence. The edifice is generally decorated in
a very gorgeous manner, supported on pillars, and open in front. It
is surrounded on the inside by a raised platform, covered with mats
or cushions, on which the Turks sit cross-legged. On one side are
musicians, generally Greeks, with mandolins and tambourines,
accompanying singers, whose melody consists in vociferation; and
the loud and obstreperous concert forms a strong contrast to the
stillness and taciturnity of Turkish meetings. On the opposite side
are men, generally of a respectable class, some of whom are found
here every day, and all day long, dozing under the double influence
of coffee and tobacco. The coffee is served in very small cups, not
larger than egg-cups, grounds and all, without cream or sugar, and
so black, thick, and bitter that it has been aptly compared to
“stewed soot”. Besides the ordinary chibouk for tobacco, there is
another implement, called narghillai, used for smoking in a
caffinet, of a more elaborate construction. It consists of a glass
vase, filled with water, and often scented with distilled rose or
other flowers. This is surmounted with a silver or brazen head,
from which issues a long flexible tube; a pipe-bowl is placed on
the top, and so constructed that the smoke is drawn, and comes
bubbling up through the water, cool and fragrant to the mouth. A
peculiar kind of tobacco, grown at Shiraz in Persia, and resembling
small pieces of cut leather, is used with this instrument.

[Illustration: IN A TURKISH COFFEE HOUSE]

Certainly there never was any such thing as a coffee-house architecture.
It may be that up to the time of Abdul Hamid, when money was more
plentiful than it has been for the past fifty years, there were coffee
houses more comfortably appointed than now exist.

The coffee house in a modernized form is, however, quite as numerous in
Turkey as in the days of Amurath III and the notorious Kuprili.

H.G. Dwight[369] writing on the present day Turkish coffee house, says:

[Illustration: ROASTING COFFEE BEFORE A CAFÉ, TURKEY]

There are thoroughfares in any Turkish city that carry on almost no
other form of traffic. There is no quarter so miserable or so
remote as to be without one or two. They are the clubs of the
poorer classes. Men of a street, a trade, a province, or a
nationality–for a Turkish coffee-house may also be Albanian,
Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Kurd, almost anything you please–meet
regularly when their work is done, at coffee-houses kept by their
own people. So much are the humbler coffee-houses frequented by a
fixed clientèle that a student of types or dialects may realize for
himself how truly they used to be called Schools of Knowledge.

The arrangement of a Turkish coffee-house is of the simplest. The
essential is that the place should provide the beverage for which
it exists and room for enjoying the same. A sketch of a coffee-shop
may often be seen on the street, in a scrap of shade or sunshine
according to the season, where a stool or two invite the passer-by
to a moment of contemplation. Larger establishments, though they
are rarely very large, are most often installed in a room longer
than it is wide, having as many windows as possible at the street
end and what we would call the bar at the other. It is a bar that
always makes me regret I do not etch, with its pleasing curves, its
high lights of brass and porcelain striking out of deep shadow, and
its usually picturesque _kahvehji_.

You do not stand at it. You sit on one of the benches running down
the sides of the room. They are more or less comfortably cushioned,
though sometimes higher and broader than a foreigner finds to his
taste. In that case you slip off your shoes, if you would do as the
Romans do, and tuck your feet up under you. A table stands in front
of you to hold your coffee–and often in summer an aromatic pot of
basil to keep the flies away. Chairs or stools are scattered about.
Decorative Arabic texts, sometimes wonderful prints, adorn the
walls. There may even be hanging rugs and china to entertain your
eyes. And there you are.

The habit of the coffee-house is one that requires a certain
leisure. You must not bolt coffee as you bolt the fire-waters of
the West, without ceremony, in retreats withdrawn from the public
eye. Being a less violent and a less shameful passion, I suppose,
it is indulged in with more of the humanities. The etiquette of the
coffee-house, of those coffee-houses which have not been too much
infected by Europe, is one of their most characteristic features.
Something like it prevails in Italy, where you tip your hat on
entering and leaving a _caffè_. In Turkey, however, I have seen a
new-comer salute one after another each person in a crowded
coffee-room, once on entering the door and again after taking his
seat, and be so saluted in return–either by putting the right hand
to the heart and uttering the greeting _Merhabah_, or by making the
_temennah_, that triple sweep of the hand which is the most
graceful of salutes. I have also seen an entire company rise upon
the entrance of an old man, and yield him the corner of honor.

Such courtesies take time. Then you must wait for your coffee to be
made. To this end coffee, roasted fresh as required by turning in
an iron cylinder over a fire of sticks and ground to the fineness
of powder in a brass mill, is put into a small uncovered brass pot
with a long handle. There it is boiled to a froth three times on a
charcoal brazier, with or without sugar as you prefer. But to
desecrate it by the admixture of milk is an unheard of sacrilege.
Some _kahvehjis_ replace the pot in the embers with a smart rap in
order to settle the grounds. You in the meanwhile smoke. That also
takes time, particularly if you “drink” a _narguileh_, as the Turks
say. This is familiar enough in the West to require no great
description. It is a big carafe with a metal top for holding
tobacco and a long coil of leather tube for inhaling the
water-cooled fumes thereof. The effect is wonderfully soothing and
innocent at first, though wonderfully deadly in the end to the
novice. The tobacco used is not the ordinary weed, but a much
coarser and stronger one called _tunbeki_, which comes from Persia.
The same sort of tobacco used to be smoked a great deal in shallow
red earthenware pipes with long mouthpieces. They are now chiefly
seen in antiquity shops.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A TURKISH CAFFINET, EARLY NINETEENTH
CENTURY--AFTER ALLAN]

When your coffee is ready it is poured into an after-dinner
coffee-cup or into a miniature bowl, and brought to you on a tray
with a glass of water. A foreigner can almost always be spotted by
the manner in which he finally partakes of these refreshments. A
Turk sips his water first, partly to prepare the way for the
coffee, but also because he is a connoisseur of the former liquid
as other men are of stronger ones. And he lifts his coffee-cup by
the saucer, whether it possess a handle or no, managing the two
together in a dexterous way of his own. The current price for all
this, not including the water-pipe, is ten paras–a trifle over a
cent–for which the _kahvehji_ will cry you “Blessing”. More
pretentious establishments charge twenty paras, while a giddy few
rise to a piaster–not quite five cents–or a piaster and a half.
That, however, begins to look like extortion. And mark that you do
not tip the waiter. I have often been surprised to be charged no
more than the tariff, although I gave a larger piece to be changed
and it was perfectly evident that I was a foreigner. That is an
experience which rarely befalls a traveller among his own
coreligionaries. It has even happened to me, which is rarer still,
to be charged nothing at all, nay, to be steadfastly refused when I
persisted in attempting to pay, simply because I was a foreigner,
and therefore a guest.

There is no reason, however, why you should go away when you have
had your coffee–or your glass of tea–and your smoke. On the
contrary, there are reasons why you should stay, particularly if
you happen into the coffee-house not too long after sunset. Then
coffee-houses of the most local color are at their best. Earlier in
the day their clients are likely to be at work. Later they will
have disappeared altogether. For Constantinople has not quite
forgotten the habits of the tent. Stamboul, except during the holy
month of Ramazan, is a deserted city at night. But just after dark
it is full of a life which an outsider is often content simply to
watch through the lighted windows of coffee-rooms. These are also
barber-shops, where men have shaved not only their chins, but
different parts of their heads according to their “countries”. In
them likewise checkers, the Persian backgammon, and various games
of long narrow cards are played. They say that Bridge came from
Constantinople. Indeed, I believe a club of Pera claims the honor
of having communicated that passion to the Western World. But I
must confess that I have yet to see an open hand in a coffee-house
of the people.

[Illustration: COFFEE MAKING IN TURKEY]

One of the pleasantest forms of amusement to be obtained in
coffee-houses is unfortunately getting to be one of the rarest. It
is that afforded by itinerant story-tellers, who still carry on in
the East the tradition of the troubadours. The stories they tell
are more or less on the order of the Arabian Nights, though perhaps
even less suitable for mixed companies–which for the rest are
never found in coffee-shops. These men are sometimes wonderfully
clever at character monologue or dialogue. They collect their pay
at a crucial moment of the action, refusing to continue until the
audience has testified to the sincerity of its interest by some
token more substantial.

Music is much more common. There are those, to be sure, who find no
music in the sounds poured forth oftenest by a gramophone, often by
a pair of gypsies with a flaring pipe and two small gourd drums,
and sometimes by an orchestra so-called of the fine lute–a company
of musicians on a railed dais who sing long songs while they play
on stringed instruments of strange curves. For myself I know too
little of music to tell what relation the recurrent cadences of
those songs and their broken rhythms may bear to the antique modes.
But I can listen, as long as musicians will perform, to those
infinite repetitions, that insistent sounding of the minor key. It
pleases me to fancy there a music come from far away–from unknown
river gorges, from camp-fires glimmering on great plains. Does not
such darkness breathe through it, such melancholy, such haunting of
elusive airs? There are flashes too of light, of song, the playing
of shepherd’s pipes, the swoop of horsemen and sudden outcries of
savagery. But the note to which it all comes back is the monotone
of a primitive life, like the day-long beat of camel bells. And
more than all, it is the mood of Asia, so rarely penetrated, which
is neither lightness or despair.

[Illustration: STREET COFFEE VENDER IN THE LEVANT, 1714]

There are seasons in the year when these various forms of
entertainment abound more than at others, as Ramazan and the two
Bairams. Throughout the month of Ramazan the purely Turkish
coffee-houses are closed in the daytime, since the pleasures which
they minister may not then be indulged in; but they are open all
night. It is during that one month of the year that Karaghieuz, the
Turkish shadow-show, may be seen in a few of the larger
coffee-shops. The Bairams are two festivals of three and four days
respectively, the former of which celebrates the close of Ramazan,
while the latter corresponds in certain respects to the Jewish
Passover. Dancing is a particular feature of the coffee-houses in
Bairam. The Kurds, who carry the burdens of Constantinople on their
backs, are above all other men given to this form of
exercise–though the Lazzes, the boatmen, vie with them. One of
these dark tribesmen plays a little violin like a pochelle, or two
of them perform on a pipe and a big drum, while the others dance
round them in a circle, sometimes till they drop from fatigue. The
weird music and the picturesque costumes and movements of the
dancers make the spectacle one to be remembered.

Christian coffee-houses also have their own festal seasons. These
coincide in general with the festivals of the church. But every
quarter has its patron saint, the saint of the local church or of
the local holy well, whose feast is celebrated by a three-day
_panayiri_. The street is dressed with flags and strings of colored
paper, tables and chairs line the sidewalk, and libations are
poured forth in honor of the holy person commemorated. For this
reason, and because of the more volatile character of the Greek,
the general note of his merrymaking is louder than that of the
Turk. One may even see the scandalous spectacle of men and women
dancing together at a Greek _panayiri_. The instrument which sets
the key of these orgies is the _lanterna_, a species of hand-organ
peculiar to Constantinople. It is a hand-piano rather, of a loud
and cheerful voice, whose Eurasian harmonies are enlivened by a
frequent clash of bells.

What first made coffee-houses suspicious to those in authority,
however, is their true resource–the advantages they offer for
meeting one’s kind, for social converse and the contemplation of
life. Hence it must be that they have so happy a tact for locality.
They seek shade, pleasant corners, open squares, the prospect of
water or wide landscapes. In Constantinople they enjoy an infinite
choice of site, so huge is the extent of that city, so broken by
hill and sea, so varied in its spectacle of life. The commonest
type of city coffee-room looks out upon the passing world from
under a grape-vine or a climbing wistaria.

[Illustration: A COFFEE HOUSE IN SYRIA--AFTER JARDIN]

Coffee-houses of distinction are to be found also in the Place of the
Pines overlooking the Marble Sea, on Giant’s Mountain, in the Landing
Place of the Man-slayer, and along the rivers that flow into the Golden
Horn.

Originally the Turkish method of preparing coffee was the Arabian
method, and it is so described by Mr. Fellows in his _Excursions through
Asia Minor_:

Each cup is made separately, the little saucepan or ladle in which
it is prepared being about an inch wide and two deep; this is more
than half filled with coffee, finely pounded with a pestle and
mortar, and then filled up with water; after being placed for a few
seconds on the fire, the contents are poured, or rather shaken, out
(being much thicker than chocolate) without the addition of cream
or sugar, into a china cup of the size and shape of half an
egg-shell, which is inclosed in one of ornamented metal for
convenience of holding in the hand.

Later, the Turks sought to improve the method by adding sugar (a
concession to the European sweet tooth) during the boiling process. The
improved Turkish recipe is as follows:

First boil the water. For two cups of the beverage add three lumps
of sugar and return the boiler to the fire. Add two teaspoonfuls of
powdered coffee, stirring well and let the pot boil up four times.
Between each boiling the pot is to be removed from the fire and the
bottom tapped gently until the froth on the top subsides. After the
last boiling pour the coffee first into one cup and then the other,
so as to evenly divide the froth.

In Syria and Palestine the Turkish-Arabian methods are followed. The
brazen dippers, or _ibriks_, are used for boiling.

[Illustration: CAFETAN

Oriental coffee-house keeper's costume]

In the Near East, coffee manners and customs are much the same today as
they were fifty or even one hundred years ago. Witness Damascus. The
following pen picture of the cafés in this ancient city was written in
1836 to accompany the drawing by Bartlett and Purser, which is
reproduced here; but it might have been written in 1922, so slight have
been the changes in the setting or the spirit of the original coffee
house that Shemsi first brought to Constantinople from Damascus in
1554.[370]

[Illustration: STREET COFFEE SERVICE IN CONSTANTINOPLE]

The Cafés of the kind represented in the plate are, perhaps, the
greatest luxury that a stranger finds in Damascus. Gardens,
kiosques, fountains, and groves are abundant around every Eastern
capital: but Cafés on the very bosom of a rapid river, and bathed
by its waves, are peculiar to this ancient city: they are formed so
as to exclude the rays of the sun, while they admit the breeze; the
light roof is supported by slender rows of pillars, and the
building is quite open on every side.

A few of these houses are situated in the skirts of the town, on
one of the streams, where the eye rests on the luxuriant vegetation
of garden and wood: others are in the heart of the city: a flight
of steps conducts to them from the sultry street, and it is
delightful to pass in a few moments from the noisy, shadeless
thoroughfare, where you see only mean gateways and the gable-ends
of edifices, to a cool, grateful, calm place of rest and
refreshment, where you can muse and meditate in ease and luxury,
and feel at every moment the rich breeze from the river. In two or
three instances, a light wooden bridge leads to the platform, close
to which, and almost out of it, one or two large and noble trees
lift the canopy of their spreading branches and leaves, more
welcome at noonday than the roofs of fretted gold in the “Arabian
Nights.” The high pavilion roof and the pillars are all constructed
of wood: the floor is of wood, and sometimes of earth, and is
regularly watered, and raised only a few inches above the level of
the stream, which rushes by at the feet of the customer, which it
almost bathes, as he sips his coffee or sherbet. Innumerable small
seats cover the floor, and you take one of these, and place it in
the position you like best.

Perhaps you wish to sit apart from the crowd, just under the shadow
of the tree, or in some favourite corner where you can smoke, and
contemplate the motley guests, formed into calm and solemn groups,
who wish to hold no communion with the Giaour. There is ample food
here for the observer of character, costume and pretension: the
tradesman, the mechanic, the soldier, the gentleman, the dandy, the
grave old man, looking wise on the past and dimly on the future:
the hadge, in his green turban, vain of his journey to Mecca, and
drawing a long bow in his tales and adventures: the long straight
pipe, the hookah with its soft curling tube and glass vase, are in
request: but the poorer argille is most commonly used.

From sunrise to set, these houses are never empty: we were
accustomed to visit one of them early every morning, before
breakfast, and very many persons were already there: yet this
“balmy hour of prime” was the most silent and solitary of the whole
day; it was the coolest also: the rising sun was glancing redly on
the waters: there was as yet no heat in the air, and the little
cup of Mocha coffee and the pipe were handed by an attendant as
soon as the stranger was seated. His favourite Café was the one
represented in the plate: the river is the Barrada, the ancient
Pharpar. Never was the sound of many waters so pleasant to the ear
as in Damascus: the air is filled with the sound, with which no
clash of tongues, rolling of wheels, march of footman or horsemen,
mingle: the numerous groups who love to resort here are silent half
the time; and when they do converse, their voice is often “low,
like that of a familiar spirit,” or in short grave sentences that
pass quickly from the ear.

[Illustration: A RIVERSIDE CAFÉ IN DAMASCUS, NINETEENTH CENTURY

After Bartlett and Purser]

Yet much, very much of the excitement of the life of the Turk in
this city, is absorbed in these coffee-houses: they are his opera,
his theatre, his conversazione: soon after his eyes are unclosed
from sleep, he thinks of his Café, and forthwith bends his way
there: during the day he looks forward to pass the evening on the
loved floor, to look on the waters, on the stars above, and on the
faces of his friends; and at the moonlight falling on all. Mahomet
committed a grievous error in the omission of coffee-houses, in a
future state: had he ever seen those of Damascus, he would surely
have given them a place on his rivers of Paradise, persuaded that
true believers must feel a melancholy void without them.

There is no ornament or richness about these houses: no sofas,
mirrors, or drapery, save that afforded by a few evergreens and
creepers: the famous silks and damasks of Damascus have no place
here; all is plain and homely; yet no Parisian Café, with its
beautiful mirrors, gilding, and luxuriousness, is so welcome to the
imagination and senses of the traveller. After wandering many days
over dry, and stony, and desert places, where the lip thirsted for
the stream, is it not delicious to sit at the brink of a wild,
impetuous torrent, to gaze on its white foam and breaking waves,
till you can almost feel their gush in every nerve and fibre, and
can bathe your very soul in them. And while you slowly smoke your
pipe of purest tobacco, the sands of the desert, and their burning
sun, rise again before you, when you prayed for even the shadow of
a cloud on your way. The banks are in some parts covered with wood,
whose soft green verdure contrasts beautifully with the clear
torrent, and almost droops into its bosom.

Near the coffee-houses are one or two cataracts several feet high,
and the perpetual sound of their fall, and the coolness they spread
around, are exquisite luxuries–in the heat of day, or in the
dimness of evening. There are two or three Cafés constructed
somewhat differently from those just described: a low gallery
divides the platform from the tide; fountains play on the floor,
which is furnished with very plain sofas and cushions; and music
and dancing always abound, of the most unrefined description.

The only intellectual gratification in these places is afforded by
the Arab story-tellers, among whom are a few eminent and clever
men: soon after his entrance, a group begins to form around the
gifted man, who, after a suitable pause, to collect hearers or whet
their expectations, begins his story. It is a picturesque sight–of
the Arab with his wild and graceful gestures, and his auditory,
hushed into deep and child-like attention, seated at the edge of
the rushing tide, while the narrator moves from side to side, and
each accent of his distinct and musical voice is heard throughout
the Café. The building directly opposite is another house, of a
similar kind in every respect There are a few small Cafés, more
select as to company, where the Turkish gentlemen often go, form
dinner parties, and spend the day.

Night is the propitious season to visit these places: the glare of
the sun, glancing on the waters, is passed away; the company is
then most numerous, for it is their favourite hour; the lamps,
suspended from the slender pillars, are lighted; the Turks, in the
various and brilliant colours of their costume, crowd the platform,
some standing moveless as the pillars beside them, their long pipe
in their hand–noble specimens of humanity, if intellect breathed
within: some reclining against the rails, others seated in groups,
or solitary as if buried in “lonely thoughts sublime”; while the
rush of the falling waters is sweeter music than that of the pipe
and the guitar, that faintly strive to be heard. The cataract in
the plate is a very fine one; on its foam the moonlight was lovely:
we passed many an hour here on such a night, the clear waters of
the Pharpar, as they rolled on, reflecting each pillar, each
Damascene slowly moving by in his waving garments. The glare of the
lamps mingled strangely with the moonlight, that rested with a soft
and vivid glory on the waters, and fell beneath pillar and roof on
the picturesque groups within.

The slender brass coffee grinders sometimes serve as a combination
utensil in the equipment of the Turkish officer. Frequently they are
made of silver. They might be called collapsible, convertible coffee
kits, as they are made to serve as a combination coffee pot, mill, can,
and cup. The green or roasted beans are kept in the lower section. It
takes but a minute to unscrew the apparatus. To make a cup of coffee,
the beans are dumped out and three or four of them are put in the middle
section. The steel crank is fitted over the squared rod projecting from
the middle section, which revolves, setting in motion the grinding
apparatus inside. The ground coffee falls into the bottom section, and
water is added. The pot is placed on the fire, and the contents brought
to a boil. The coffee pot serves as a cup. The process requires but a
few minutes. The cup is rinsed out, the beans replaced, the utensils put
together, the whole thing is slipped into the officer’s tunic, and he
goes on, refreshed.

In Persia, where tea is mostly drunk, the Turkish-Arabian methods of
making coffee are followed. In Ceylon and India, the same applies to the
native population, but the whites follow the European practise. In
India, many people look upon coffee as just a _bonne bouche_–a
“chaser.” A well known English tea firm has had some success in India
with a tinned “French coffee”, which is a blend of Indian coffee and
chicory.

European methods obtain in making coffee in China and Japan, and in the
French and Dutch colonies. When traveling in the Far East one of the
greatest hardships the coffee lover is called upon to endure is the
European bottled coffee extract, which so often supplies lazy chefs with
the makings of a most forbidding cup of coffee.

In Java, a favorite method is to make a strong extract by the French
drip process and then to use a spoonful of the extract to a cup of hot
milk–a good drink when the extract is freshly made for each service.

_Coffee Making in Europe_

In Europe, the coffee drink was first sold by lemonade venders. In
Florence those who sold coffee, chocolate, and other beverages were not
called _caffetiéri_ (coffee sellers) but _limonáji_ (lemonade venders).
Pascal’s first Paris coffee shop served other drinks as well as coffee;
and Procope’s café began as a lemonade shop. It was only when coffee,
which was an afterthought, began to lead the other beverages, that he
gave the name café to his whole refreshment place.

Today, nearly every country in Europe can supply the two extremes of
coffee making. In Paris and Vienna, one may find it brewed and served in
its highest perfection; but here too it is frequently found as badly
done as in England, and that is saying a good deal. The principal
difficulty seems to be in the chicory flavor, for which long years of
use has cultivated a taste, with most people. Now coffee-and-chicory is
not at all a bad drink; indeed the author confesses to have developed a
certain liking for it after a time in France–but it is not coffee. In
Europe, chicory is not regarded as an adulterant–it is an addition, or
modifier, if you please. And so many people have acquired a
coffee-and-chicory taste, that it is doubtful if they would appreciate a
real cup of coffee should they ever meet it. This, of course, is a
generalization; and like all generalizations, is dangerous, for it _is_
possible to obtain good coffee, properly made, in any European country,
even England, in the homes of the people, but seldom in the hotels or
restaurants.

[Illustration: COFFEE AL FRESCO IN JERUSALEM]

AUSTRIA. Coffee is made in Austria after the French style, usually by
the drip method or in the pumping percolator device, commonly called the
Vienna coffee machine. The restaurants employ a large-size urn fitted
with a combination metal sieve and cloth sack. After the ground coffee
has infused for about six minutes, a screw device raises the metal
sieve, the pressure forcing the liquid through the cloth sack containing
the ground coffee.

Vienna cafés are famous, but the World War has dimmed their glory. It
used to be said that their equal could not be found for general
excellence and moderate prices. From half-past eight to ten in the
morning, large numbers of people were wont to breakfast in them on a cup
of coffee or tea, with a roll and butter. _Mélangé_ is with milk;
“brown” coffee is darker, and a _schwarzer_ is without milk. In all the
cafés the visitor may obtain coffee, tea, liqueurs, ices, bottled beer,
ham, eggs, etc. The Café Schrangl in the Graben is typical. Then there
are the dairies, with coffee, a unique institution. In the _Prater_
(public park) there are many interesting cafés.

Charles J. Rosebault says in the _New York Times_:

The café of Vienna has been imitated all over the world–but the
result has never failed to be an imitation. The nearest approach to
the genuine in my experience was the upstairs room of the old
Fleischman Café in New York. That was because the average New
Yorker knew it not and it remained sacred to the internationalists:
the musicians, artists, writers, and other Bohemians to whom had
been intrusted the secret of its existence. It is the spirit that
counts, and it was the spirit of its frequenters that made the
Vienna café. It was everyman’s club, and everywoman’s, too, where
one went to relax and forget all the worries of existence, to look
over papers and magazines from all parts of the world and printed
in every known language, to play chess or skat or taracq, to chat
with friends and to drink the inimitable Viennese coffee, the
fragrance of which can no more be described than the perfume of
last year’s violets.

The café was filled after the noon meal, when busy men took their
coffee and smoked; again around five o’clock, when all the world
and his wife paraded along the Graben and the Karntner Strasse, and
then dropped into a favorite café for coffee or chocolate and
cakes–horns and crescents of delicious dough filled with jam or,
possibly, the wonderful Kugelhupf, in comparison with which our
sponge is like unto lead; finally in the evening, when there were
family parties and those returning from theatres and concerts and
opera.

[Illustration: Photograph by Burton Holmes

THE CAFÉ SCHRANGL IN THE GRABEN, VIENNA, THE CITY THAT COFFEE MADE
FAMOUS]

While the café life of Vienna has been nearly killed by the World War,
it is to be hoped that time will restore at least something of its
former glory. In spite of the stories of plundering bands of Bolshevists
that in the latter part of 1921 wrecked some of the better known places,
we read that Oscar Straus, composer of _The Chocolate Soldier_, is
living in comparative luxury in Vienna, and spends most of his time in
the cafés, where he is to be found usually from two until five in the
afternoon and from eleven o’clock at night until some early hour of the
morning “surrounded by musicians of lesser note and wealth, whom, to a
degree, he supports; also with him being many of the leading composers,
librettists, actors, actresses, and singers of Vienna.”

For Vienna coffee, the liquor is usually made in a pumping percolator or
by the drip process. In normal times it is served two parts coffee to
one of hot milk topped with whipped cream. During 1914-18 and the recent
post-war period, however, the sparkling crown of delicious whipped cream
gave way to condensed milk, and saccharine took the place of sugar.

BELGIUM. In Belgium, the French drip method is most generally employed.
Chicory is freely used as a modifier. The greatest coffee drinker among
reigning monarchs is said to be the King of the Belgians. His majesty
takes a cup of coffee before breakfast, after breakfast, at his noonday
meal, in the afternoon, after dinner, and again in the evening.

BRITISH ISLES. In the British Isles coffee is still being boiled;
although the infusion, true percolation (drip), and filtration methods
have many advocates. A favorite device is the earthenware jug with or
without the cotton sack that makes it a coffee biggin. When used without
the sack, the best practise is first to warm the jug. For each pint of
liquor, one ounce (three dessert-spoonfuls) of freshly ground coffee is
put in the pot. Upon it is poured freshly boiling water–three-fourths
of the amount required. After stirring with a wooden spoon, the
remainder of the water is poured in, and the pot is returned to the
“hob” to infuse, and to settle for from three to five minutes. Some stir
it a second time before the final settling.

The best trade authorities stress home-grinding, and are opposed to
boiling the beverage. They advocate also its use as a breakfast
beverage, after lunch, and after the evening meal.

From an American point of view, the principal defects in the English
method of making coffee lie in the roasting, handling, and brewing. It
has been charged that the beans are not properly cooked in the first
place, and that they are too often stale before being ground. The
English run to a light or cinnamon roast, whereas the best American
practise requires a medium, high, or city roast. A fairly high shade of
brown is favored on the South Downs with a light shade for Lancashire,
the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the south of Scotland. The trade
demands, for the most part, a ripe chestnut brown. Wholesale roasting is
done by gas and coke machines; while retail dealers use mostly a small
type of inner-heated gas machine. The large gas machines (with
capacities running from twenty-five to seven hundred pounds) have
external air-blast burners, direct and indirect burners, sliding
burners, etc. The best known are the Faulder and Moorewood machines. In
the Uno, a popular retail machine, roasting seven to fourteen pounds at
a time, the coffee beans are placed in the space between outer and inner
concentric cylinders, one made of perforated steel, and the other of
wire gauze, revolving together. A gas flame of the Bunsen type burns
inside the inner cylinder, its heat traversing the outer, or coffee
cylinder, while the fumes are driven off through the open ends. The
roasting coffee may be viewed through a mica or wire-gauze panel
inserted in the wall of the outer cylinder. The Faulder machine has an
external flame, a capacity of from seven to fourteen pounds; and there
are quick gas machines, with capacities ranging from three pounds to two
hundred and twenty-four pounds, for the retail trade.

[Illustration: FAVORITE ENGLISH COFFEE-MAKING METHOD]

[Illustration: A CAFÉ OF YE MECCA COMPANY, LONDON]

In recent years there has been a marked improvement in English coffee
roasting, due to the intelligent study brought to bear upon the subject
by leaders of the trade’s thought, and by the retail distributer, who,
in the person of the retail grocer, is, generally speaking, better
educated to his business than the retail grocer in any other country.
Years ago, it was the practise to use butter or lard to improve the
appearance of the bean in roasting; but this is not so common as
formerly.

The British consumer, however, will need much instruction before the
national character of the beverage shows a uniform improvement. While
the coffee may be more carefully roasted, better “cooked” than it was
formerly, it is still remaining too long unsold after roasting, or else
it is being ground too long a time before making. These abuses are,
however, being corrected; and the consumer is everywhere being urged to
buy his coffee freshly roasted and to have it freshly ground. Another
factor has undoubtedly contributed to give England a bad name among
lovers of good coffee, and that is certain tinned “coffees,” composed of
ground coffee and chicory, mixtures that attained some vogue for a time
as “French” coffee. They found favor, perhaps, because they were easily
handled. Package coffees have not been developed in England as in
America; but there is a more or less limited field for them, and there
are several good brands of absolutely pure coffee on the market.

The demi-tasse is a popular drink after luncheon, after dinner, and
even during the day, especially in the cities. In London, there are
cafés that make a specialty of it; places like Peel’s, Groom’s, and the
Café Nero in the city; also the shops of the London Café Co., and Ye
Mecca Co.

While, in the home, it is customary to steep the coffee; in hotels and
restaurants some form of percolating apparatus, extractor, or steam
machine is employed. There are the Criterion (employing a drip tray for
making coffee in the Etzenberger style); Fountain; Platow; Syphon
(Napier); and Verithing extractors, put out by Sumerling & Co. of
London; and the well-known J. & S. rapid coffee-making machine, having
an infuser, and producing coffee by steam pressure, manufactured by W.M.
Still & Sons, Ltd., London.

American visitors complain that coffee in England is too thick and
syrupy for their liking. Coffee in restaurants is served “white” (with
milk), or black, in earthen, stoneware, or silver pots. In chain
restaurants, like Lyons’ or the A.B.C., there is to be found on the
tariff, “hot milk with a dash of coffee.”

[Illustration: GROOM'S COFFEE HOUSE, FLEET STREET, LONDON]

[Illustration: CAFÉ MONICO, PICCADILLY CIRCUS, LONDON]

As to the boiling method, this is already generally discredited in the
countries of western Europe. The steeping method so much favored in
England may be responsible for some of the unkind things said about
English coffee; because it undoubtedly leads to the abuse of
over-infusion, so that the net result is as bad as boiling.

The vast majority of the English people are, however, confirmed tea
drinkers, and it is extremely doubtful if this national habit, ingrained
through centuries of use of “the cup that cheers” at breakfast and at
tea time in the afternoon can ever be changed.

As already mentioned in this work, the London coffee houses of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave way to a type of coffee house
whose mainstay was its food rather than its drink. In time, these too
began to yield to the changing influences of a civilization that
demanded modern hotels, luxurious tea lounges, smart restaurants, chain
shops, tea rooms, and cafés with and without coffee. A certain type of
“coffee shop,” with rough boarded stalls, sanded floors and “private
rooms,” frequented by lower class workingmen, were to be found in
England for a time; but because of their doubtful character, they were
closed up by the police.

Among other places in London where coffee may be had in English or
continental style, mention should be made of the Café Monico, a good
place to drop in for a coffee and liqueur, and one of the pioneers of
the modern restaurant; Gatti’s, where _café filtré_, or coffee produced
by the filtration method, is a specialty; the cosmopolitan Savoy with
its popular tea lounge (teas, sixty cents); the Piccadilly Hotel, with
its Louis XIV restaurant catering to refined and luxurious tastes; the
Waldorf Hotel, with its American clientèle and its palm court (teas,
thirty-six cents); the Cecil, with its palm court and tea balcony, also
having a special attraction for Americans; Lyons’ Popular Café (iced
coffee, twelve cents); the Trocadero with its special Indian curries
prepared by native cooks once each week; the Temple Bar restaurant, an
attractive refectory owned by the semi-philanthropic Trust-Houses, Ltd.,
which runs some two hundred similar establishments throughout the
country, serving alcoholic drinks but stressing non-intoxicating
beverages, among them special Mocha at six and eight cents a cup;
Slater’s, Ltd., catering mostly to business folk in the city, there
being about a score of restaurants and tea rooms under this name with
retail shops attached; the British Tea Table Association, like Slater’s,
a grown-up sister of the olden bun shop of Queen Victoria’s day; and the
Kardomah chain of cafés, where one is reasonably sure to get a
satisfying cup of coffee and a cake.

[Illustration: GATTI'S, IN THE STRAND, LONDON]

[Illustration: TEA LOUNGE OF HOTEL SAVOY, LONDON]

Supplementing the above, Charles Cooper, some time editor of the
_Epicure_ and _The Table_, has prepared for this work some notes on the
evolution of the old-time London coffee houses into the present-day tea
rooms, tea lounges, cafés, and restaurants for all comers. Mr. Cooper
says of the transformation:

The old-fashioned London coffee-house that flourished forty to
fifty years ago has within the past thirty years been completely
extinguished by the modern tea rooms. These old-fashioned
establishments were mainly situated in and about the Strand and
Fleet Street, the neighborhood of the Inns of Court, etc. They did
not sacrifice much to outside show and decoration. They were
divided into boxes or pews, and were generally speaking clean and
well ordered; the prices were moderate, and the fare simple but
superlatively good. There is nothing to equal it now. Chops were
cooked in the grill. The tea and coffee were of the best; the hams
were York hams and the bacon the best Wiltshire; they were the last
places where real buttered toast was made. The art is now lost.
They catered exclusively to men; and their clientèle consisted of
journalists, artists, actors, men from the Inns of Court, students,
_et al._ A man living in chambers could breakfast comfortably at
one of these places, and read all the morning papers at his ease.
The most westerly perhaps of the old houses was Stone’s in Panton
Street, Haymarket, which has recently been sold. Groom’s in Fleet
Street, where a good cup of coffee may still be had, is principally
frequented by barristers about the luncheon hour. They are usually
men who lunch lightly.

The tea rooms, as I have said, have killed the coffee houses. At
the time the latter flourished, there were no facilities in London
for a woman, unattended by a man, to obtain refreshment beyond a
weak cup of tea at a few confectioners’. It mattered the less in
the days when the girl clerk had not come into being. When the
field of women’s employment widened, fresh requirements were
created which the coffee shops did not meet.

[Illustration: LYONS' "POPULAR CAFÉ," PICCADILLY--ONE OF MANY OPERATED
UNDER THAT NAME]

[Illustration: PALM COURT IN THE WALDORF HOTEL--A POPULAR RESORT FOR
AMERICAN TRAVELERS]

[Illustration: TWO POPULAR PLACES FOR COFFEE IN LONDON]

The tea room pioneers in London were the Aërated Bread Company,
familiarly known as the A.B.C. I think that coffee palaces in
provincial industrial centers had been started; but as part of a
temperance propaganda, to counteract the attractions of the public
house. The Aërated Bread Company was founded about the middle of
the past century for the manufacture and sale of bread made under
the patent aërated process of Dr. Daugleish. The shops were opened
for the sale of bread to the public for home consumption; but to
give people an opportunity of testing it, facilities were provided
for obtaining a cup of tea, and bread and butter, on the premises.
This subsidiary object became in a short time the most important
part of the company’s business. It multiplied its shops, enlarged
its bill of fare to include cooked foods; and while, nowadays, the
A.B.C. and its rivals cater to many thousands daily, I doubt if
anybody ever buys a loaf to take home.

The A.B.C. has many competitors, similar shops having been started
by Lyons, Lipton, Slaters. Express Dairy Company, Cabin, Pioneer
Cafés, and others. _Ex uno disce omnes._

[Illustration: TEMPLE BAR RESTAURANT, LONDON]

The fare in all these places is much alike, as are the general
equipment, prices, and class of customers. They cater for a cheap
class of business. In the busy centers they are frequented mostly
by young men and girl clerks and shop assistants, by women in town,
shopping, and such-like custom. Young employees can get a modest
mid-day meal at a price to suit a shallow pocket. Before the war,
the ruling price for a cup of tea, and a roll and butter, was
fourpence, and the general tariff in proportion. Nowadays, the war
has run up prices at least fifty percent. During the worst times of
food control the fare was very scanty and very unappetizing. As a
rule, it is plain and wholesome, with no pretense of being
_recherché_. Tea is almost always very good; coffee not on the same
level. Their tea rooms are all places designed for small, quick
meals; and are in no sense lounges.

[Illustration: TEA BALCONY IN THE HOTEL CECIL, LONDON]

Lyons have refreshment-houses of different grades. The Popular Café
is a cut above the tea rooms, and so are the Corner Houses. Two
years ago, the A.B.C. amalgamated with Buzard’s, an old established
confectioner’s in Oxford Street–a famous cake-house.

The Monico and Gatti’s appeal to a quite different class from that
catered to by the tea shops, although perhaps not to what Mrs.
Boffin would call “the highfliers of fashion” who frequent the
lounges of the fashionable hotels. Gatti’s original café was under
the arches of Charing Cross station.

[Illustration: SLATER'S, A BETTER-CLASS CHAIN SHOP, LONDON]

I may add about the Savoy that it was an outcome of the successful
Gilbert and Sullivan operas of the seventies, D’Oyly Carte having
expended some of his profits on building the hotel on a piece of
waste ground by the Savoy Theatre. He brought over M. Ritz from
Monte Carlo to manage the hotel and restaurant, and Escoffier, the
greatest chef of the day, to preside over the cuisine. They made
the Savoy famous for its dinners, and it has always maintained a
high reputation, although Escoffier, who has now retired, ruled
later at the Carlton; and Ritz, at the hotel in Piccadilly which
bears his name.

BULGARIA. In Bulgaria, Arabian-Turkish methods of making coffee prevail.
The accompanying illustration shows a group in a caravan of the faithful
on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The venerable Moslem, who is
ambitious of becoming a hadji, is attended by his guards, distinguished
by their fantastic dress; their glittering golden-hafted _hanjars_,
stuck in their shawl girdles; and their silver-mounted pistols; the
grave turban replaced by a many-tasseled cap. Their accommodation is the
stable of a khan, or serai, shared with their camel. Their refreshment
is coffee, thick, black and bitter, served by the khanji in tiny
egg-shaped cups.

[Illustration: ST. JAMES'S RESTAURANT, PICCADILLY, LONDON]

In DENMARK and FINLAND coffee is made and served after the French and
German fashion.

FRANCE. Were it not for the almost inevitable high roast and frequently
the disconcerting chicory addition, coffee in France might be an
unalloyed delight–at least this is how it appears to American eyes. One
seldom, if ever, finds coffee improperly brewed in France–it is never
boiled.

Second only to the United States, France consumes about two million bags
of coffee annually. The varieties include coffee from the East Indies;
Mocha; Haitian (a great favorite); Central American; Colombian; and
Brazils.

[Illustration: AN A.B.C. SHOP, LONDON]

[Illustration: HALT OF CARAVANERS AT A SERAI, BULGARIA]

Although there are many wholesale and retail coffee roasters in France,
home roasting persists, particularly in the country districts. The
little sheet-iron cylinder roasters, that are hand-turned over an iron
box holding the charcoal fire, find a ready sale even in the modern
department stores of the big cities. In any village or city in France it
is a common sight on a pleasant day to find the householder turning his
roaster on the curb in front of his home. Emmet G. Beeson, in _The Tea
and Coffee Trade Journal_ gives us this vignette of rural coffee
roasting in the south of France:

In a certain town in the south of France I saw an old man with an
outfit a little larger than the home variety, a machine with a
capacity of about ten pounds. Instead of a cylinder in which to
roast his coffee, he had perched on a sheet-iron frame a hollow
round ball made of sheet iron. In the top of this ball there was a
little slide which was opened by the means of a metal tool. In the
sheet-iron frame he had kindled his charcoal fire. Directly in
front of his roaster was a home-made cooling pan, the sides of
which were of wood, the bottom covered with a fine grade of wire
screening.

On this particular afternoon, the old man had taken up his place on
the curb; and a big black cat had taken advantage of the warmth
offered by the charcoal fire and was curled up, sleeping peacefully
in the pan nearest the fire. The old man paid no attention to the
cat, but went on rotating his ball of coffee and puffing away
pensively on his cigarette. When his coffee had become blackened
and burned, and blackened and burned it was, he stopped rotating
the ball, opened the slide in the top, turned it over, and the hot,
burned coffee rolled out, and much to his delight, on the sleeping
cat, which leaped out of the pan and scampered up the street and
into a hole under an old building.

I afterward learned that this old fellow made a business of going
about the town gathering up coffee from the houses along the way
and roasting it at a few sous per kilo, much the same fashion as a
scissors grinder plies his trade in an American town.

[Illustration: CAFÉ DE LA PAIX, WHERE PARIS DRINKS ITS COFFEE OUTDOORS]

Quite a few grocers roast their own coffee in crude devices much like
those described above; but the large coffee roasters are gradually
eliminating this sort of procedure. There are at Havre several roasters,
but only two of importance; one does a business of about two hundred and
fifty bags a day, and the next largest has a capacity of about one
hundred and sixty bags a day. In Paris, there are many coffee roasters,
some quite large, comparatively speaking, one having a capacity of about
seven hundred and fifty bags a day. Shop-keepers in Paris and other
large cities roast their coffee fresh daily. The machines used are of
the ball or cylinder type, employing gas fuel and turned by electric
power. Invariably they stand where they may be seen from the street.

Sample-roasters, or testing tables, in France are conspicuous by their
absence. Inquiry regarding this subject discloses that coffee is sold on
description; and when the French trader is asked, “How do you know your
delivery is up to description so far as cup quality is concerned?” he
answers that this is arrived at from the general appearance and the
smell of the coffee in the green. Perhaps one reason for the laxity in
buying cup quality may be explained by the fact that coffee is roasted
very high, in fact it is burned almost to a charred state; and unless
the coffee is unusually bad in character, the burned taste eliminates
any foreign flavor it may have.

[Illustration: SIDEWALK ANNEX, CAFÉ DE LA PAIX, PARIS, WITH OPERA HOUSE
IN BACKGROUND--SUMMER OF 1918]

The fact that coffee was, and still is, quite generally sold to the
consumer green, accounts for Central American coffees taking first
place. Style takes preference over everything else when it comes to
selling to a Frenchman.

To the American coffee merchant it seems that the French are carrying
their artistic tastes to an unreasonable extreme when they apply them to
coffee; for coffee is grown to drink and not to look at.

Since the coming of the large coffee roaster, who delivers roasted
coffee right down the line to the consumer, Santos has come in for its
share of the business. The roasters are getting good results out of
Santos blends, up to fifty percent and sixty percent with West Indian
and Central American coffees. Rio is as much in disfavor in France as it
is in the United States, perhaps more so.

In Brittany the demand is for peaberry coffee, no matter of what
variety. This comes about from the fact that the people of this section
of the country still do a great deal of their roasting at home, and have
become accustomed to the use of peaberry coffee because they do not have
the improved hand roasters, and still do a great deal of their roasting
in pans in the ovens of their stoves. The peaberry coffee rolls about so
nicely in the pan that they get a much more uniform roast.

Nearly all the coffee is ground at home, which is not a bad practise for
the consumer; but perhaps works hardship on the dealer, who can mix some
grade grinders into his blends without doing them any material harm.
Where coffee mills are used in the stores, they are of the Strong-Arm
family and of an ancient heritage. To get a growl out of the grocer in
France, buy a kilo of coffee and ask him to grind it.

Package coffee and proprietary brands have not come into their own to
the extent that they have in the United States, although there are at
present two firms in Paris which have started in this business and are
advertising extensively on billboards, in street cars, and in the
subways. However, most coffee is still sold in bulk. The butter, egg,
and cheese stores of France do a very large business in coffee. Prior to
the war and high prices, there were some very large firms doing a
premium business in coffee, tea, spices, etc. They still exist, and
have a very fine trade; but since the high prices of coffees and
premiums, the business has gone down very materially. They operate by
the wagon-route and solicitor method, just as some of our American
companies do. One very large firm in Paris has been in this business for
more than thirty years, operating branches and wagons in every town,
village, and hamlet in France.

[Illustration: CAFÉ DE LA RÉGENCE, PARIS, SHOWING THE TYPICAL
CONTINENTAL ARRANGEMENT OF SEATS]

The consumption of coffee is increasing very materially in France; some
say, on account of the high price of wine, others hold that coffee is
simply growing in favor with the people. Among the masses, French
breakfast consists of a bowl or cup of _café au lait_, or half a cup or
bowl of strong black coffee and chicory, and half a cup of hot milk, and
a yard of bread. The workingman turns his bread on end and inserts it
into his bowl of coffee, allowing it to soak up as much of the liquid as
possible. Then he proceeds to suck this concoction into his system. His
approval is demonstrated by the amount of noise he makes in the
operation.

Among the better classes, the breakfast is the same, _café au lait_,
with rolls and butter, and sometimes fruit. The brew is prepared by the
drip, or true percolator, method or by filtration. Boiling milk is
poured into the cup from a pot held in one hand together with the brewed
coffee from a pot held in the other, providing a simultaneous mixture.
The proportions vary from half-and-half to one part coffee and three
parts milk. Sometimes, the service is by pouring into the cup a little
coffee then the same quantity of milk and alternating in this way until
the cup is filled.

Coffee is never drunk with any meal but breakfast, but is invariably
served _en demi-tasse_ after the noon and the evening meals. In the
home, the usual thing after luncheon or dinner is to go into the _salon_
and have your demi-tasse and liqueur and cigarettes before a cosy grate
fire. A Frenchman’s idea of after-dinner coffee is a brew that is
unusually thick and black, and he invariably takes with it his liqueur,
no matter if he has had a cocktail for an appetizer, a bottle of red
wine with his meat course, and a bottle of white wine with the salad and
dessert course. When the demi-tasse comes along, with it must be served
his cordial in the shape of cognac, benedictine, or crème de menthe. He
can not conceive of a man not taking a little alcohol with his
after-dinner coffee, as an aid, he says, to digestion.

In Normandy, there prevails a custom in connection with coffee drinking
that is unique. They produce in this province great quantities of what
is known as _cidre_, made from a particular variety of apple grown
there–in other words, just plain hard cider. However, they distil this
hard cider, and from the distillation they get a drink called
_calvados_.

[Illustration: CAFÉ DE LA RÉGENCE IN 1922]

The man from Normandy takes half a cup of coffee, and fills the cup with
_calvados_, sweetened with sugar, and drinks it with seeming relish.
Ice-cold coffee will almost sizzle when _calvados_ is poured into it. It
tastes like a corkscrew, and one drink has the same effect as a crack on
the head with a hammer. From the toddling age up, the Norman takes his
_calvados_ and coffee.

In the south of France they make a concoction from the residue of
grapes. They boil the residue down in water, and get a drink called
_marc_; and it is used in much the same way as the Norman in the north
uses _calvados_. Then there is also the very popular summertime drink
known as _mazagran_, which in that region means seltzer water and cold
coffee, or what Americans might call a coffee highball.

Making coffee in France has been, and always will be, by the drip and
the filtration methods. The large hotels and cafés follow these methods
almost entirely, and so does the housewife. When company comes, and
something unusual in coffee is to be served, Mr. Beeson says he has
known the cook to drip the coffee, using a spoonful of hot water at a
time, pouring it over tightly packed, finely ground coffee, allowing the
water to percolate through to extract every particle of oil. They use
more ground coffee in bulk than they get liquid in the cup, and
sometimes spend an hour producing four or five demi-tasses. It is
needless to say that it is more like molasses than coffee when ready for
drinking.

It is not unusual in some parts of France to save the coffee grounds for
a second or even a third infusion, but this is not considered good
practise.

Von Liebig’s idea of correct coffee making has been adapted to French
practise in some instances after this fashion: put used coffee grounds
in the bottom chamber of a drip coffee pot. Put freshly ground coffee in
the upper chamber. Pour on boiling water. The theory is that the old
coffee furnishes body and strength, and the fresh coffee the aroma.

The cafés that line the boulevards of Paris and the larger cities of
France all serve coffee, either plain or with milk, and almost always
with liqueur. The coffee house in France may be said to be the wine
house; or the wine house may be said to be the coffee house. They are
inseparable. In the smallest or the largest of these establishments
coffee can be had at any time of day or night. The proprietor of a very
large café in Paris says his coffee sales during the day almost equal
his wine sales.

The French, young or old, take a great deal of pleasure in sitting out
on the sidewalk in front of a café, sipping coffee or liqueur. Here they
love to idle away the time just watching the passing show.

In Paris, there are hundreds of these cafés lining the boulevards, where
one may sit for hours before the small tables reading the newspapers,
writing letters, or merely idling. In the morning, from eight to eleven,
employees, men-about-town, tourists, and provincials throng the cafés
for _café au lait_. The waiters are coldly polite. They bring the
papers, and brush the table–twice for _café créme_ (milk), and three
times for _café complet_ (with bread and butter).

In the afternoon, _café_ means a small cup or glass of _café noir_, or
_café nature_. It is double the usual amount of coffee dripped by
percolator or filtration device, the process consuming eight to ten
minutes. Some understand _café noir_ to mean equal parts of coffee and
brandy with sugar and vanilla to taste. When _café noir_ is mixed with
an equal quantity of cognac alone it becomes _café gloria_. _Café
mazagran_ is also much in demand in the summertime. The coffee base is
made as for _café noir_, and it is served in a tall glass with water to
dilute it to one’s taste.

Few of the cafés that made Paris famous in the eighteenth century
survive. Among those that are notable for their coffee service are the
Café de la Paix; the Café de la Régence, founded in 1718; and the Café
Prévost, noted also for chocolate after the theater.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE BIARD CAFÉS

There are about 200 of these coffee and wine shops in Paris. They are
frequented mostly by laborers, clerks, and midinettes]

[Illustration: RESTAURANT PROCOPE, 1922

Successor to the famous "Cave" of 1689]

GERMANY. Germany originated the afternoon coffee function known as the
kaffee-klatsch. Even today, the German family’s reunion takes place
around the coffee table on Sunday afternoons. In summer, when weather
permits, the family will take a walk into the suburbs, and stop at a
garden where coffee is sold in pots. The proprietor furnishes the
coffee, the cups, the spoons and, in normal times, the sugar, two pieces
to each cup; and the patrons bring their own cake. They put one piece of
sugar into each cup and take the other pieces home to the “canary bird,”
meaning the sugar bowl in the pantry.

Cheaper coffee is served in some gardens, which conspicuously display
large signs at the entrance, saying: “Families may cook their own coffee
in this place.” In such a garden, the patron merely buys the hot water
from the proprietor, furnishing the ground coffee and cake himself.

While waiting for the coffee to brew, he may listen to the band and
watch the children play under the trees. French or Vienna drip pots are
used for brewing.

Every city in Germany has its cafés, spacious places where patrons sit
around small tables, drinking coffee, “with or without” turned or
unturned, steaming or iced, sweetened or unsweetened, depending on the
sugar supply; nibble, at the same time, a piece of cake or pastry,
selected from a glass pyramid; talk, flirt, malign, yawn, read, and
smoke. Cafés are, in fact, public reading rooms. Some places keep
hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers and magazines on file for the
use of patrons. If the customer buys only one cup of coffee, he may keep
his seat for hours, and read one newspaper after another.

Three of the four corners of Berlin’s most important street crossing are
occupied by cafés. This is where Unter den Linden and Friedrichstrasse
meet. On the southwest corner there is Kranzler’s staid old café, a very
respectable place, where the lower hall is even reserved for
non-smokers. On the southeast corner is Café Bauer, known the world
over. However, it has seen better days. It has been outdistanced by
competitors. On the northeast corner is the Victoria, a new-style place,
very bright, and less staid. There no room is reserved for non-smokers,
for most of the ladies, if they do not themselves smoke, will light the
cigars for their escorts.

Around the Potsdamer Platz there is a number of cafés. Josty’s is
perhaps the most frequented in Berlin. It is the best liked on account
of the trees and terraces in front. Farther to the west, on
Kuerfuerstendamm, there are dozens of large cafés.

[Illustration: MORNING COFFEE IN FRONT OF A BOULEVARD CAFÉ, PARIS, WITH
A BRITISH BACKGROUND]

[Illustration: INTERIOR, CAFÉ BAUER, BERLIN]

Some of the cafés are meeting-places for certain professions and trades.
The Admiral’s café, in Friedrichstrasse, for instance, is the
“artistes’” exchange. All the stage folk and stars of the tanbark meet
there every day. Chorus girls, tumblers, ladies of the flying trapeze,
contortionists, and bareback riders are to be found there, discussing
their grievances, denouncing their managers, swapping their diamonds,
and recounting former triumphs. Cinema-makers come also to pick out a
cast for a new film play. There one can pick out a full cast every
minute.

Then there is the Café des Westens in Kuerfuerstendamm, the old one,
where dreamers and poets congregate. It is called also Café
Groessenwahn, which means that persons suffering from an exaggerated ego
are conspicuous by their presence and their long hair.

At almost every table one may find a poet who has written a play that is
bound to enrich its author and any man of means who will put up the
money to build a new theater in which to produce it.

Saxony and Thuringia are proverbial hotbeds of coffee lovers. It is said
that in Saxony there are more coffee drinkers to the square inch and
more cups to the single coffee bean than anywhere else upon earth. The
Saxons like their coffee, but seem to be afraid it may be too strong for
them. So, when over their cups, they always make certain they can see
bottom before raising the steaming bowl to the lip.

Von Liebig’s method of making coffee, whereby three-fourths of the
quantity to be used is first boiled for ten or fifteen minutes, and the
remainder added for a six-minute steeping or infusion, is religiously
followed by some housekeepers. Von Liebig advocated coating the bean
with sugar. In some families, fats, eggs, and egg-shells are used to
settle and to clarify the beverage.

[Illustration: CAFÉ BAUER, UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN]

Coffee in Germany is better cooked (roasted) and more scientifically
prepared than in many other European countries. In recent years, during
the World War and since, however, there has been an amazing increase in
the use of coffee substitutes, so that the German cup of coffee is not
the pure delight it was once.

GREECE. Coffee is the most popular and most extensively used
non-alcoholic beverage in Greece, as it is throughout the Near East. Its
annual per capita consumption there is about two pounds, two-thirds of
the supply coming _via_ Austria and France, Brazil furnishing direct the
bulk of the remaining third.

Coffee is given a high or city roast, and is used almost entirely in
powdered form. It is prepared for consumption principally in the Turkish
demi-tasse way. Finely ground coffee is used even in making ordinary
table, or breakfast, coffee. In private houses the cylindrical brass
hand-grinders, manufactured in Constantinople, are mostly used. In many
of the coffee houses in the villages and country towns throughout Greece
and the Levant, a heavy iron pestle, wielded by a strong man, is
employed to pulverize the grains in a heavy stone or marble mortar;
while the poorer homes use a small brass pestle and mortar, also
manufactured in Turkey.

In his _The Greeks of the Present Day_[371], Edmond François Valentin
About says:

The coffee which is drunk in all the Greek houses rather astonishes
the travellers who have neither seen Turkey nor Algeria. One is
surprised at finding food in a cup in which one expected drink. Yet
you get accustomed to this coffee-broth and end by finding it more
savoury, lighter, more perfumed, and especially more wholesome,
than the extract of coffee you drink in France.

Then About gives the recipe of his servant Petros, who is “the first man
in Athens for coffee”:

The grain is roasted without burning it; it is reduced to an
impalpable powder, either in a mortar or in a very close-grained
mill. Water is set on the fire till it boils up; it is taken off to
throw in a spoonful of coffee, and a spoonful of pounded sugar for
each cup it is intended to make; it is carefully mixed; the coffee
pot is replaced on the fire until the contents seem ready to boil
over; it is taken off, and set on again; lastly it is quickly
poured into the cups. Some coffee drinkers have this preparation
boiled as many as five times. Petros makes a rule of not putting
his coffee more than three times on the fire. He takes care in
filling the cups to divide impartially the coloured froth which
rises above the coffee pot; it is the _kaimaki_ of the coffee. A
cup without _kaimaki_ is disgraced.

When the coffee is poured out you are at liberty to drink it
boiling and muddy, or cold and clear. Real amateurs drink it
without waiting. Those who allow the sediment to settle down, do
not do so from contempt, for they afterwards collect it with the
little finger and eat it carefully.

Thus prepared, coffee may be taken without inconvenience ten times
a day: five cups of French coffee could not be drunk with impunity
every day. It is because the coffee of the Turks and the Greeks is
a diluted tonic, and ours is a concentrated tonic.

I have met at Paris many people who took their coffee without
sugar, to imitate the Orientals. I think I ought to give them
notice, between ourselves, that in the great coffee-houses of
Athens, sugar is always presented with the coffee; in the khans and
second-rate coffee-houses, it is served already sugared; and that
at Smyrna and Constantinople, it has everywhere been brought to me
sugared.

[Illustration: KRANZLER'S, UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN]

ITALY. In Italy coffee is roasted in a wholesale and retail way as well
as in the home. French, German, Dutch, and Italian machines are used.
The full city, or Italian, roast is favored. There are cafés as in
France and other continental countries, and the drink is prepared in the
French fashion. For restaurants and hotels, rapid filtering machines,
first developed by the French and Italians, are used. In the homes,
percolators and filtration devices are employed.

The De Mattia Brothers have a process designed to conserve the aroma in
roasting. The Italians pay particular attention to the temperature in
roasting and in the cooling operation. There is considerable glazing,
and many coffee additions are used.

Like the French, the Italians make much of _café au lait_ for breakfast.
At dinner, the _café noir_ is served.

Cafés of the French school are to be found along the Corso in Rome, the
Toledo in Naples, in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuel and the Piazza del
Duomo in Milan, and in the arcades surrounding the Piazza de San Marco
in Venice, where Florian’s still flourishes.

NETHERLANDS. In the Netherlands, too, the French café is a delightful
feature of the life of the larger cities. The Dutch roast coffee
properly, and make it well. The service is in individual pots, or in
demi-tasses on a silver, nickle, or brass tray, and accompanied by a
miniature pitcher containing just enough cream (usually whipped), a
small dish about the size of an individual butter plate holding three
squares of sugar, and a slender glass of water. This service is
universal; the glass of water always goes with the coffee. It is the one
sure way for Americans to get a drink of water. It is the custom in
Holland to repair to some open-air café or indoor coffee house for the
after-dinner cup of coffee. One seldom takes his coffee in the place
where he has his dinner. These cafés are many, and some are elaborately
designed and furnished. One of the most interesting is the St. Joris at
the Hague, furnished in the old Dutch style. The approved way of making
coffee in Holland is the French drip method.

NORWAY AND SWEDEN. French and German influences mark the roasting,
grinding, preparing, and serving of coffee in Norway and Sweden.
Generally speaking, not so much chicory is used, and a great deal of
whipped cream is employed. In Norway, the boiling method has many
followers. A big (open) copper kettle is used. This is filled with
water, and the coffee is dumped in and boiled. In the poorer-class
country homes, the copper kettle is brought to the table and set upon a
wooden plate. The coffee is served directly from the kettle in cups. In
better-class homes, the coffee is poured from the kettle into silver
coffee pots in the kitchen, and the silver coffee pots are brought to
the table. The only thing approaching coffee houses are the “coffee
rooms” which are to be found in Christiania. These are small one-room
affairs in which the plainer sorts of foods, such as porridge, may be
purchased with the coffee. They are cheap, and are largely frequented by
the poorer class of students, who use them as places in which to study
while they drink their coffee.

In RUSSIA and SWITZERLAND, French and German methods obtain. Russia,
however, drinks more tea than coffee, which by the masses is prepared in
Turkish fashion, when obtainable. Usually, the coffee is only a cheap
“substitute.” The so-called _café à la Russe_ of the aristocracy, is
strong black coffee flavored with lemon. Another Russian recipe calls
for the coffee to be placed in a large punch bowl, and covered with a
layer of finely chopped apples and pears; then cognac is poured over the
mass, and a match applied.

ROUMANIA and SERVIA drink coffee prepared after either the Turkish or
the French style, depending on the class of the drinker and where it is
served. Substitutes are numerous.

In SPAIN and PORTUGAL the French type of café flourishes as in Italy. In
Madrid, some delightful cafés are to be found around the Puerto del Sol,
where coffee and chocolate are the favorite drinks. The coffee is made
by the drip process, and is served in French fashion.

_Coffee Manners and Customs in North America_

The introduction of coffee and tea into North America effected a great
change in the meal-time beverages of the people. Malt beverages had been
succeeded by alcoholic spirits and by cider. These in turn were
supplanted by tea and coffee.

CANADA. In Canada, we find both French and English influences at work in
the preparation and serving of the beverage; “Yankee” ideas also have
entered from across the border. Some years back (about 1910) A. McGill,
chief chemist of the Canadian Inland Revenue Department, suggested an
improvement upon Baron von Liebig’s method, whereby Canadians might
obtain an ideal cup of coffee. It was to combine two well-known methods.
One was to boil a quantity of ground coffee to get a maximum of body or
soluble matter. The other was to percolate a similar quantity to get the
needed caffeol. By combining the decoction and the infusion, a finished
beverage rich in body and aroma might be had. Most Canadians continue to
drink tea, however, although coffee consumption is increasing.

MEXICO. In Mexico, the natives have a custom peculiarly their own. The
roasted beans are pounded to a powder in a cloth bag which is then
immersed in a pot of boiling water and milk. The _vaquero_, however,
pours boiling water on the powdered coffee in his drinking cup, and
sweetens it with a brown sugar stick.

Among the upper classes in Mexico the following interesting method
obtains for making coffee:

Roast one pound until the beans are brown inside. Mix with the
roasted coffee one teaspoonful of butter, one of sugar, and a
little brandy. Cover with a thick cloth. Cool for one hour; then
grind. Boil one quart of water. When boiling, put in the coffee and
remove from fire immediately. Let it stand a few hours, and strain
through a flannel bag, and keep in a stone jar until required for
use; then heat quantity required.

[Illustration: SIDEWALK CAFÉ, LISBON]

UNITED STATES. In no country has there been so marked an improvement in
coffee making as in the United States. Although in many parts, the
national beverage is still indifferently prepared, the progress made in
recent years has been so great that the friends of coffee are hopeful
that before long it may be said truly that coffee making in America is a
national honor and no longer the national disgrace that it was in the
past.

[Illustration: THESE COFFEE POTS ARE WIDELY USED IN SWEDEN FOR BOILING
COFFEE

Left, copper pot with wooden handle and iron legs designed to stand in
the coals--Center, glass-globe pot, for stove use, enclosed in
felt-lined brass cosey--Right, hand-made hammered-brass kettle for stove
use]

Already, in the more progressive homes, and in the best hotels and
restaurants, the coffee is uniformly good, and the service all that it
should be. The American breakfast cup is a food-beverage because of the
additions of milk or cream and sugar; and unlike Europe, this same
generous cup serves again as a necessary part of the noonday and evening
meals for most people.

[Illustration: THE COFFEE ROOM OF THE HOTEL ADOLPHUS, DALLAS, TEXAS]

[Illustration: DAY-AND-NIGHT COFFEE ROOM, RICE HOTEL, HOUSTON, TEXAS]

[Illustration: HOTEL BARS REPLACED BY COFFEE ROOMS IN THE UNITED STATES

One effect of prohibition has been to lead many hotels to feature their
coffee service, bringing back the modern type of coffee room illustrated
above]

The important and indispensable part that sugar plays in the make-up of
the American cup of coffee was ably set forth by Fred Mason,[372]
vice-president of the American Sugar Refining Co., when he said:

The coffee cup and the sugar bowl are inseparable table companions.
Most of us did not realize this until the war came, with its
attendant restrictions on everything we did, and we found that the
sugar bowl had disappeared from all public eating places. No longer
could we make an unlimited number of trips to the sugar bowl to
sweeten our coffee; but we had to be content with what was doled
out to us with scrupulous care–a quantity so small at times that
it gave only a hint of sweetness to our national beverage.

Then it was that we really appreciated how indispensable the proper
amount of sugar was to a good, savory cup of coffee, and we missed
it as much as we would seasoning from certain cooked foods.
Secretly we consoled ourselves with the promise that if the day
ever came when sugar bowls made their appearance once more, filled
temptingly with the sweet granules that were “gone but not
forgotten,” we should put an extra lump or an additional spoonful
of sugar into our coffee to help us forget the joyless war days.

Since sugar is so necessary to our enjoyment of this popular
beverage, it is obvious that a considerable part of all the sugar
we consume must find its way into the national coffee cup. The
stupendous amount of 40,000,000,000 cups of coffee is consumed in
this country each year. Taking two teaspoonfuls or two lumps as a
fair average per cup, we find that about 800,000,000 pounds of
sugar, almost one-tenth of our total annual consumption, are
required to sweeten Uncle Sam’s coffee cup. This is specially
significant when one considers that, with the single exception of
Australia, the United States consumes more sugar per capita than
any country on earth.

Sugar adds high food value to the stimulative virtues of coffee.
The beverage itself stimulates the mental and physical powers,
while the sugar it contains is fuel for the body and furnishes it
with energy. Sugar is such a concentrated food that the amount used
by the average person in two cups of coffee is enough to furnish
the system with more energy than could be derived from 40 oysters
on the half-shell.

Since prohibition, the average citizen is drinking one hundred more cups
of coffee a year than he did in the old days; and a good part of the
increase is attributed to newly formed habits of drinking coffee between
meals, at soda fountains, in tea and coffee shops, at hotels, and even
in the homes. In other words, the increase is due to coffee drinking
that directly takes the place of malt and spirituous liquors. There have
come into being the hotel coffee room; the custom of afternoon coffee
drinking; and free coffee-service in many factories, stores, and
offices.

In colonial days, must or ale first gave way to tea, and then to coffee
as a breakfast beverage. The Boston “tea party” clinched the case for
coffee; but in the meantime, coffee was more or less of an after-dinner
function, or a between-meals drink, as in Europe. In Washington’s time,
dinner was usually served at three o’clock in the afternoon, and at
informal dinner parties the company “sat till sunset–then coffee.”

In the early part of the nineteenth century, coffee became firmly
intrenched as the one great American breakfast beverage; and its
security in this position would seem to be unassailable for all time.

Today, all classes in the United States begin and end the day with
coffee. In the home, it is prepared by boiling, infusion or steeping,
percolation, and filtration; in the hotels and restaurants, by infusion,
percolation, and filtration. The best practise favors true percolation
(French drip), or filtration.

Steeping coffee in American homes (an English heirloom) is usually
performed in a china or earthenware jug. The ground coffee has boiling
water poured upon it until the jug is half full. The infusion is stirred
briskly. Next, the jug is filled by pouring in the remainder of the
boiling water, the infusion is again stirred, then permitted to settle,
and finally is poured through a strainer or filter cloth before serving.

When a pumping percolator or a double glass filtration device is used,
the water may be cold or boiling at the beginning as the maker prefers.
Some wet the coffee with cold water before starting the brewing process.

For genuine percolator, or drip coffee, French and Austrian china drip
pots are mostly employed. The latest filtration devices are described in
chapter XXXIV.

The Creole, or French market, coffee for which New Orleans has long been
famous is made from a concentrated coffee extract prepared in a drip
pot. First, the ground coffee has poured over it sufficient boiling
water thoroughly to dampen it, after which further additions of boiling
water, a tablespoonful at a time, are poured upon it at five minute
intervals. The resulting extract is kept in a tightly corked bottle for
making _café au lait_ or _café noir_ as required. A variant of the
Creole method is to brown three tablespoonfuls of sugar in a pan, to add
a cup of water, and to allow it to simmer until the sugar is dissolved;
to pour this liquid over ground coffee in a drip pot, to add boiling
water as required, and to serve black or with cream or hot milk, as
desired.

In New Orleans, coffee is often served at the bedside upon waking, as a
kind of early breakfast function.

The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 served to introduce the
Vienna café to America. Fleischmann’s Vienna Café and Bakery was a
feature of our first international exposition. Afterward, it was
transferred to Broadway, New York, where for many years it continued to
serve excellent coffee in Vienna style next door to Grace Church.

The opportunity is still waiting for the courageous soul who will bring
back to our larger cities this Vienna café or some Americanized form of
the continental or sidewalk café, making a specialty of tea, coffee, and
chocolate.

The old Astor House was famous for its coffee for many years, as was
also Dorlon’s from 1840 to 1922.

Members of the family of the late Colonel Roosevelt began to promote a
Brazil coffee-house enterprise in New York in 1919. It was first called
Café Paulista, but it is now known as the Double R coffee house, or Club
of South America, with a Brazil branch in the 40’s and an Argentine
branch on Lexington Avenue. Coffee is made and served in Brazilian
style; that is, full city roast, pulverized grind, filtration made;
service, black or with hot milk. Sandwiches, cakes, and crullers are
also to be had.

One of New York’s newest clubs is known as the Coffee House. It is in
West Forty-fifth Street, and has been in existence since December, 1915,
when it was opened with an informal dinner, at which the late Joseph H.
Choate, one of the original members, outlined the purpose and policies
of the club.

The founders of the Coffee House were convinced–as the result of the
high dues and constantly increasing formality and discipline in the
social clubs in New York–that there was need here for a moderate-priced
eating and meeting place, which should be run in the simplest possible
way and with the least possible expense.

At the beginning of its career, the club framed, adopted, and has since
lived up to, a most informal constitution: “No officers, no liveries, no
tips, no set speeches, no charge accounts, no RULES.”

The membership is made up, for the most part, of painters, writers,
sculptors, architects, actors, and members of other professions. Members
are expected to pay cash for all orders. There are no proposals of
candidates for membership. The club invites to join it those whom it
believes to be in sympathy with the ideals of its founders.

The method of preparing coffee for individual service in the
Waldorf-Astoria, New York, which has been adopted by many first-class
hotels and restaurants that do not serve urn-made coffee exclusively, is
the French drip plus careful attention to all the contributing factors
for making coffee in perfection, and is thus described by the hotel’s
steward:

[Illustration: BRITANNIA COFFEE POT FROM WHICH ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS OFTEN
SERVED IN NEW SALEM

Its story is told on page 614]

A French china drip coffee pot is used. It is kept in a warm
heater; and when the coffee is ordered, this pot is scalded with
hot water. A level tablespoonful of coffee, ground to about the
consistency of granulated sugar, is put into the upper and
percolator part of the coffee pot. Fresh boiling water is then
poured through the coffee and allowed to percolate into the lower
part of the pot. The secret of success, according to our
experience, lies in having the coffee freshly ground, and the water
as near the boiling point as possible, all during the process. For
this reason, the coffee pot should be placed on a gas stove or
range. The quantity of coffee can be varied to suit individual
taste. We use about ten percent more ground coffee for after dinner
cups than we do for breakfast. Our coffee is a mixture of Old
Government Java and Bogota.

[Illustration: COFFEE SERVICE, HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK]

C. Scotty, chef at the Hotel Ambassador, New York, thus describes the
method of making coffee in that hostelry:

In the first place, it is essential that the coffee be of the
finest quality obtainable; secondly, better results are obtained by
using the French filterer, or coffee bag.

Twelve ounces of coffee to one gallon of water for breakfast.

Sixteen ounces of coffee to one gallon of water for dinner.

Boiling water should be poured over the coffee, sifoned, and put
back several times. We do not allow the coffee grounds to remain in
the urn for more than fifteen to twenty minutes at any time.

The coffee service at the best hotels is usually in silver pots and
pitchers, and includes the freshly made coffee, hot milk or cream
(sometimes both), and domino sugar.

Within the last year (1921) many of the leading hotels, and some of the
big railway systems, have adopted the custom of serving free a
demi-tasse of coffee as soon as the guest-traveler seats himself at the
breakfast table or in the dining car. “Small blacks,” the waiters call
them, or “coffee cocktails,” according to their fancy.

At the Pequot coffee house, 91 Water Street, New York, a noonday
restaurant in the heart of the coffee trade, an attempt has been made to
introduce something of the old-time coffee house atmosphere.

The Childs chain of restaurants recently began printing on its menus, in
brackets before each item, the number of calories as computed by an
expert in nutrition. Coffee with a mixture of milk and cream is credited
with eighty-five calories, a well known coffee substitute with seventy
calories, and tea with eighteen calories. The Childs chain of 92
restaurants serves 40,000,000 cups of coffee a year, made from 375 tons
of ground coffee, and figuring an average of 53 cups to the pound.

The Thompson chain of one hundred restaurants serves 160,000 cups of
coffee per day, or more than 58,000,000 cups per year.

_Coffee Customs in South America_

ARGENTINE. Coffee is very popular as a beverage in Argentina. _Café con
léche_–coffee with milk, in which the proportion of coffee may vary
from one-fourth to two-thirds–is the usual Argentine breakfast
beverage. A small cup of coffee is generally taken after meals, and it
is also consumed to a considerable extent in cafés.

BRAZIL. In Brazil every one drinks coffee and at all hours. Cafés making
a specialty of the beverage, and modeled after continental originals,
are to be found a-plenty in Rio de Janeiro, Santos, and other large
cities. The custom prevails of roasting the beans high, almost to
carbonization, grinding them fine, and then boiling after the Turkish
fashion, percolating in French drip pots, steeping in cold water for
several hours, straining and heating the liquid for use as needed, or
filtering by means of conical linen sacks suspended from wire rings.

The Brazilian loves to frequent the cafés and to sip his coffee at his
ease. He is very continental in this respect. The wide-open doors, and
the round-topped marble tables, with their small cups and saucers set
around a sugar basin, make inviting pictures. The customer pulls toward
him one of the cups and immediately a waiter comes and fills it with
coffee, the charge for which is about three cents. It is a common thing
for a Brazilian to consume one dozen to two dozen cups of black coffee a
day. If one pays a social visit, calls upon the president of the
Republic, or any lesser official, or on a business acquaintance, it is a
signal for an attendant to serve coffee. _Café au lait_ is popular in
the morning; but except for this service, milk or cream is never used.
In Brazil, as in the Orient, coffee is a symbol of hospitality.

In CHILE, PARAGUAY and URUGUAY, very much the same customs prevail of
making and serving the beverage.

_Coffee Drinking in Other Countries_

In AUSTRALIA and NEW ZEALAND, English methods for roasting, grinding,
and making coffee are standard. The beverage usually contains thirty to
forty percent chicory. In the bush, the water is boiled in a billy can.
Then the powdered coffee is added; and when the liquid comes again to a
boil, the coffee is done. In the cities, practically the same method is
followed. The general rule in the antipodes seems to be to “let it come
to a boil”, and then to remove it from the fire.

In CUBA the custom is to grind the coffee fine, to put it in a flannel
sack suspended over a receiving vessel, and to pour cold water on it.
This is repeated many times, until the coffee mass is well saturated.
The first drippings are repoured over the bag. The final result is a
highly concentrated extract, which serves for making _café au lait_, or
_café noir_, as desired.

In MARTINIQUE, coffee is made after the French fashion. In PANAMA,
French and American methods obtain; as also in the PHILIPPINES.

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