People have been drinking coffee for more than 400 years.
London’s first coffee stall opened in 1652 after an eccentric Greek named Pasqua Roseé had developed a taste for it in Turkey and decided to import it. Coffee went viral. By 1663 there were 82 coffeehouses, dubbed “penny universities” (since one penny was the price of a cup of coffee), where journalists, writers, and other members of the public gathered to debate and occasionally come to blows over the day’s events.
When coffee became a staple of the best middleclass houses, their cooks needed to know how to prepare it. Enter Mrs Beeton and The Book of Household Management.
“The roasting of coffee in the best manner requires great nicety, and much of the qualities of the beverage depends upon the operation. The roasting of coffee for the dealers in London and Paris has now become a separate branch of business, and some of the roasters perform the operation on a great scale, with considerable skill. Roasted coffee loses from 20 to 30 per cent, by sufficient roasting, and the powder suffers much by exposure to the air; but, while raw, it not only does not lose its flavour for a year or two, but improves by keeping. If a cup of the best coffee be placed upon a table boiling hot, it will fill the room with its fragrance; but the coffee, when warmed again after being cold, will be found to have lost most of its flavour.
To have coffee in perfection, it should be roasted and ground just before it is used, and more should not be ground at a time than is wanted for immediate use, or, if it be necessary to grind more, it should be kept closed from the air. Coffee readily imbibes exhalations from other substances, and thus often acquires a bad flavour: brown sugar placed near it will communicate a disagreeable flavour. It is stated that the coffee in the West Indies has often been injured by being laid in rooms near the sugar-works, or where rum is distilled; and the same effect has been produced by bringing over coffee in the same ships with rum and sugar. Dr. Moseley mentions that a few bags of pepper, on board a ship from India, spoiled a whole cargo of coffee.
With respect to the quantity of coffee used in making the decoction, much depends upon the taste of the consumer. The greatest and most common fault in English coffee is the too small quantity of the ingredient. Count Rumford* says that to make good coffee for drinking after dinner, a pound of good Mocha coffee, which, when roasted and ground, weighs only thirteen ounces, serves to make fifty-six full cups, or a little less than a quarter of an ounce to a coffee-cup of moderate size.”
* Otherwise known as Sir Benjamin Thompson (1753–1814), Count Rumford invented a percolating coffee urn during pioneering work with the Bavarian Army, where he improved the soldiers’ diet as well as their clothing. In 1813, he published an essay, “Of the Excellent Qualities of Coffee and the Art of Making it in the Highest Perfection”, which included several designs for percolators.
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