Six Cups of Coffee

PREFACE

It is not much to say that nine-tenths of that decoction which passes under the name of coffee, is unworthy to be so called, and that many persons live and die without ever tasting a really good cup of that delicious beverage.

As a nation, the American people want the best of everything, and intend to have that best. Furthermore, they are very properly and intelligently eager to turn it to the greatest advantage. But what avails the best raw material if it be not prepared in such a manner as to develop and secure its subtle, delicate, volatile and enlivening qualities? The very same ingredients may be injurious and depressing, or wholesome and exhilarating, according to the way in which they are treated.

The six cups of coffee offered to the reader, by six of the foremost authorities regarding cooking, will bring a new and healthful stimulus to prepare that refreshing drink in a manner which shall leave nothing to be desired. They are not made from old grounds re-heated for the occasion, but are as fresh as the intelligence and the experience which have produced them.

A country which expends nearly thirty-five millions of dollars each year for the aromatic berry, can well afford to study the best methods of extracting its desirable qualities.

In those family circles where Good Housekeeping is the rule, not the exception, it is to be hoped that this little book will be welcomed as a useful friend and interesting companion.

COFFEE – I.

As Prepared By Maria Parloa

COFFEE – II.

As Prepared by Marion Harland

THE very best way to make coffee is to buy the raw berries and brown them yourself, at least once a week. Most printed directions for preparing the beverage insist upon these preliminaries as a sine qua non. When the mistress cannot superintend the roasting, it is seldom well done, the coffee being burned or unequally cooked. Therefore, the average housewife, who has her hands full of "must-be-dones," reading that tolerable coffee cannot be had unless this rule be obeyed, makes up her mind to give her family a second-rate article. Should coffee be regarded as a daily necessity of existence by her and her household, she would do well to spare time from other occupations (if possible) to prepare it in the most approved manner.

To this end, purchase Java and Mocha in equal quantities; mix and roast them in a broad dripping-pan, shaking and stirring often, particularly when they begin to brown, turning the pan, end for end, several times during the operation. The berries should be evenly tinted to the shade we know as "coffee-color." Burnt grains must be thrown away. Lift the pan to a table, and stir into the hot coffee the beaten whites of two eggs for each pound, and a dessertspoonful of fresh butter. This keeps in the aroma until the grinding lets it out. Do it quickly and faithfully, glazing every berry with the air-proof coating. When cool, shake the coffee in a sieve, that the berries may not stick together, and put it into a tight canister. Grind in a good mill —i. e., one that works well without rattling or "wobbling" – every morning as much as will be needed for the day. This was our mothers' and grandmothers' way of preparing coffee grains for making the most popular beverage known to civilized peoples, and no domestic considered herself aggrieved if required to do it. Now, the good wife who informs her cook that "we roast and grind our own coffee," will have trouble in the flesh. Bridget's impregnable belief is that "what is good enough for people that lives in finer houses nor yerself, is plenty good for yez." It is not to be undermined by representations that ground coffee bought by the package has lost much of its original value with time, and is, furthermore, shamefully adulterated. What your richer neighbors use ought to satisfy you, especially when discontent with it entails worry and labor upon herself. I repeat it: If you must have irreproachable coffee, look to it in person.

Next to this process in excellence is the plan of purchasing, a pound at a time, freshly-ground coffee from a trustworthy grocer, whose mill goes every day; or you may buy it freshly roasted in the grain from him in small quantities, putting a certain portion in the oven until warmed through, as you need it, and grinding it before it cools. This insures you against the admixture of foreign substances. The belief in the extensive adulteration of the ground coffee sold by the package at a low rate is founded upon a rock of fact. Sacks of beans and tons of chicory are bought without a scruple, and stored unblushingly in the warehouses of coffee and spice millers.

Make sure then, to begin with, that your material is pure and lately ground. On the last point, take notice that the coffee which is to be made into a drink by the percolation of steam or water should be ground more finely than when it is to be boiled.

Next see that the water is on what may be called "a fresh boil." It should not have simmered for hours at the side of the stove until all the liveliness is spent, but stand in the hottest place, where it will come quickly and furiously to the boiling point, then be used at once.

The perfection of coffee, to my way of thinking, is made in the "Vienna coffee-pot." A tea-kettle of copper, brass, or plated silver, full of boiling water, is set over a spirit lamp. Into it is fitted a tube attached to a glass receptacle for the finely-ground coffee, which is kept from entering the tube by a wire sieve. A tight stopper prevents the escape through the kettle-spout of the steam generated by the lamp. It is thus forced upward through the tube and sieve into the dry coffee. The globe has a brass cover that keeps in the heat. The coffee is speedily saturated with vapor, and begins to heave and boil like the crater of a volcano. When the tossing mass fills the upper vessel, the stopper is withdrawn from the spout of the lower, and the surface slowly sinks to the original level. The stopper is replaced, and another boil begins. Three boils and as many drainings will leave in the kettle delicious black coffee, fragrant and clear. It can be made on the breakfast or dinner-table in five minutes, if the flame be strong and the water on the boil when set over it. Directions and measures for quantities of coffee and water accompany the pot.

Hardly second in merit to this method is the use of the French "biggin" or "grecque." A tin cylinder, furnished with two movable and one stationary strainers, is set on a coffee-pot. Dry, fine coffee goes into the upper vessel in the proportion of a half-pint cupful to a quart of boiling water poured on this, and left to filter through once, twice, or three times, as a moderately or very strong infusion is desired. The pot should be made hot by scalding before the cylinder is fitted on, then stand on the hot range or hearth, while the liquid drips through the strainers. But this must not boil then or afterwards.

Persons accustomed to Vienna or French coffee do not relish that cooked in the old-fashioned style, but as many still cling to the latter, it is well to know how to obtain the most satisfactory result offered by it.

Allow to each even cupful of ground coffee a quart of boiling water. Mix the coffee in a bowl with half a cupful of cold water and the white and shell of an egg; stir all well together before putting the mixture into the boiler. Add the boiling water, and let it boil fast ten minutes after it begins to bubble. Throw in one-third of a cupful of cold water to check ebullition; draw to one side, and let the decoction settle for three minutes before pouring it off gently from the grounds into the urn.

Send hot milk – cream, if you have it – to table with coffee. A teaspoonful of whipped cream, laid on the surface of each cupful, adds to the elegance of the beverage.

COFFEE – III.

Two Ways with Coffee, as Described by Mrs. Helen Campbell

PERHAPS the two should read twenty, and it would, were it any part of my present mission to give every possibility of method with the berry from bush to pot or filter. But I deal to-day only with two, and they define themselves at once, sharply and decisively – a good way and a bad way; and as, according to a famous moralist, we take more interest in the faults than in the virtues of a friend, it is with the bad way that we begin. It is a way susceptible of many variations, as my own eyes have seen, but all reducible to the one formula, – bad. Moreover, they all emanated from a source supposed to represent the acme of good housekeeping. It was in New England, far to the east, and the quiet house where a part of a summer was spent had every charm but that of good coffee. Paint, walls, and floors were spotlessly clean. The sheets smelled of green grass and all growing things, and, like every washable article, dazzled one with the whiteness and purity of their cleanliness. Bread and butter were perfect, and innumerable pies equally so. But the coffee! Freakishly, mysteriously, variously bad; but bad inevitably. Why and how one act could have such manifold effects became the problem, and gradually, by means of much patient observation made from my place by the south window in the room, which was both dining-room and sitting-room, I found out.

My hostess came down late one morning. The coffee of the previous day had stood in the tin pot all night, and she poured off such liquid as remained, emptied the grounds, rinsed the pot with cold water, and put in a cupful of cold coffee. This was set on the stove, and soon began to boil. The potatoes were frying, and some slices of pork also, and she busied herself with these for a time; then, as a sort of afterthought, took some coffee from the canister, ground it, and poured it into the pot. The kettle had boiled furiously for an hour, and I knew that the water that filled it had stood all night in the kitchen; these two facts meaning that it had parted with the last bubble of life and spirit, and was flat, stale and unprofitable. But she filled the coffee-pot to the brim, throwing in the bit of fish skin for clearing; and on it boiled till the bell had rung, and Aaron came in from the barn and received his cup, made bearable by the cream, which she never stinted. But not a detective appointed for the purpose could have told the nature of the compound before him, and would have echoed the despairing traveler's request: "If this is tea, bring me coffee; and if it's coffee, bring me tea."

Happily, Aaron was thirsty, and emptied the pot. His mother turned out the grounds, washed the pot with soap-suds, and set it away, half dry – an immediate explanation of one of the flavors sometimes to be perceived. Observation, the next morning, showed that the kettle did not boil, because the fire refused to burn properly. But the coffee went in, and the water went on, and in due time came to the table, distinctly flavored with soap, but drank with calm unconsciousness by both Aaron and his mother. The supply of cream had gone by mistake into the churn, and there was no alleviation. I looked at the determined countenance of my hostess, and wondered if I might speak. Here was the well by the door; here was a canister of real coffee; here milk that could boil. What lacked it that I must forego the real union of all these elements? Only my own craven nature, which shrunk from the conflict, and continued to shrink, through three weeks of vicissitude. I had grown indifferent, but the sight of a fresh package of coffee coming in under Aaron's arm aroused me to mild persuasion. I read at the tea-table a bit from some paper on Delmonico's theory of boiling water.

"He must a' been dretful notional. I wouldn't a' had him come pokin' about my kitchen," remarked my hostess, decisively.

"But he was quite right. Water is spoiled for drinking, as hot water, or for making tea or coffee, if it passes beyond that first few minutes of effervescence. It should be fresh water, freshly boiled, and poured at once on the coffee, which ought to be in a clean, hot pot. It doesn't make much difference whether it is boiled or filtered. Delicious coffee can be had by either method, if those conditions are followed absolutely; the best coffee is ruined if they are not."

"Folks that don't like my vittles can go where there's vittle's they do like," was my hostess's answer, after a moment of stony silence. And so I lost that boarding-place, and found one where they never ground their own coffee, but where they did everything else to it, decently and in order.

Two years later I found myself one morning in a waste, howling wilderness in North Carolina – a tar and turpentine station in the pine woods, where only a cabin or two showed signs of life. One truck of the car was off the track. Hours must pass before we could go on, and any breakfast lay forty miles beyond.

"You'll get a snack in yonder," the conductor said presently, pointing to a distant cabin. "And it's a pretty good one. I've tried it before."

He led the way under the pines to the lonely little cabin, in the door of which stood a tall "cracker," with a keener face than most of his order. It was the roughest of interiors, but it was clean. He had already cut some slices of bacon and placed it in his pan, and a pone baked in the ashes. A coffee-mill was screwed against the post, and from a shed I heard the lowing of a cow. We should not be milkless.

"Do your prettiest, Jacob," the conductor said, and Jacob nodded. Then he went to a spring and filled a little kettle with the fresh, bubbling water, and hung it over the coals. Coffee was in a sack in the corner, and he took out a handful and roasted it then and there, turning each grain in the pan as it browned, and grinding it the instant the process ended. The water boiled on the same moment. He scalded his coffee-pot, put in the ground coffee and the boiling water, and put that and a little can of milk on the coals. Three minutes passed. Then he lifted the pot, poured off a cupful to free the nozzle, poured it back, and put it aside to settle.

"Set by," he said, concisely, putting a tin cup at my place, with a spoonful of sugar in the bottom.

"We hain't any store cups," he said; "an' this ain't what you're used to, but it won't spoil the coffee." And with that he poured two streams, one a rich, clear brown, the other snowy white, and both at boiling-point, till the cup was full. Never had more perfect coffee passed my lips, and I said so.

"Learned that in Mexico," said the tall "cracker," with a smile of pride. "Used to drink my coffee straight; but go down thar for a year, an' now can't bar it no other way but their's. Roast it, an' boil it, and drink it all to onst. It gits ahead o' whiskey, or even peach an' honey."