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Coffee (Many people enjoy a good cup)

Many people enjoy a good cup of coffee after dinner, but too often a very flavourless fluid is served up under that name. It is not difficult to make good coffee if a few simple rules are followed. The success of the coffee naturally depends upon the quality of the coffee bean, on the blending of different growths, and on the roasting. Unfortunately the beans are often roasted when too green and not sufficiently dry, and are not subjected long enough to the influence of the fire. Hence the beans are only half roasted, the inner portion being hardly touched, and sometimes the outer grain has not even been deprived of its shuck. Coffee made from such beans has neither aroma nor colour.

It is important to bear in mind that good results can only be obtained from coffee roasted the same day, and, if possible, just before the moment of using. Never buy ready-ground coffee. When ready-ground, it loses much of its aroma.

Always use china or porcelain coffee-pots. Tin utensils always give a bad taste to the liquid, and coffee that remains in them for any length of time becomes undrinkable.

Coffee should never boil. Boiling entirely destroys the delicate volatile aroma of the berry, and makes it bitter to the taste, and injurious to the stomach. Coffee should always be infused, not boiled. The simplest method of making it is the best, and the following is a good recipe. Put four ounces of coffee, well roasted and freshly ground, into the filter of a china coffee-pot; put on the cover of the filter and add in small quantities one quart of boiling water, pouring slowly through the filter just sufficient at a time to thoroughly moisten the coffee. The water must be quite boiling each time a small quantity is added. One quart of boiling water will give about one and a half pints of good black coffee. Never shake the pot to make the fluid pass quicker. The hot water poured on it ought to pass slowly and gently through the thickness of ground coffee, and thus bring out its essence and aroma. In doing so it filters itself, like water passing through a bed of sand, and comes out bright and clear; but if stirred up to hasten filtration it becomes thick and discoloured. One sort of coffee alone will not make a good beverage; generally two or three kinds are mixed together. The most esteemed and the dearest is old Mocha, small yellow beans, very shrivelled and unequal in shape, the ugliest looking of all; then comes the Java, a large beaned coffee, of a dull colour and excellent taste, but as dear as the Mocha; then follows the Mysore, a middle-sized closed bean, in taste resembling the Mocha; next again is the Porto Rico, a good coffee for mixing, cheaper than the first named, excellent to mix with the Mysore, to which it imparts a dark colour. The Columbia and Martinique are both excellent with the Java or Mocha. All the South American kinds make good coffee if mixed with half quantities of Mocha, Java, or Mysore. The addition of chicory should not be allowed when you wish to make good coffee. It may be used by second and third-rate coffee-shops for economy's sake to supply so-called coffee at a cheap price, but in good houses any such admixture should always be eschewed; the connoisseur can never be deceived. In Belgium, Holland, Germany, and the north of France, chicory is much used, because "coffee" is drunk in large quantities at every hour of the day, and its use is excusable, as the price of the pure article is high; but in good families, where quality is the first essential, the use of chicory is forbidden.

In families where a coffee roaster would be too large for their requirements, the beans may be roasted as follows. Put as much as is wanted into a clean steel or iron frying-pan. Place the pan on a slow coal or gas fire, and shake it continually until the beans attain a dark-brown colour. Then put them in the coffee mill, grind, and make into the fragrant beverage at once. In this way alone is it possible to have coffee in perfection. If not required at once, let the beans cool upon a sheet of clean paper, and put them into an air-tight canister. On no account grind them until just before use. Coffee mills, in wood or metal, may be obtained at any ironmonger's, at prices from two shillings upwards, so that no one has any excuse for not grinding his own coffee.