Coffee
There are two methods of making coffee successfully. In each case the proportions are the same. One tablespoon of ground coffee to each cup and one for the pot.
The entry gives a ratio rather than a procedure, and that ratio is still the one most brewing guides land on. A few period assumptions sit behind it.
- What a "cup" meantCoffee cups of the period are usually reckoned at about 6 fluid ounces rather than the 8-ounce measuring cup, though the recipe does not say. One level tablespoon of ground coffee to 6 ounces of water, plus one for the pot, sits at the weaker end of the modern range of roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons per 6 ounces.
- "One for the pot"The extra spoonful compensates for grounds that never fully give up their extract and for the coffee absorbed and left behind in the wet bed. It matters most in small batches; scaling to a large pot, the extra spoon becomes negligible and can be dropped.
- The two methodsThe entry does not say what the two methods are. In 1911 the usual pair would have been boiled coffee, where grounds are stirred into water in an open pot and settled with cold water or egg white, and filtered or percolated coffee. Estes gives only the shared proportion here.
- Grind sizeCoffee for a boiling pot was generally ground coarse, closer to what you would use in a French press. If you are measuring by the tablespoon rather than by weight, a fine grind packs more coffee into the spoon and will overshoot the ratio noticeably.
- Water temperatureModern practice puts brewing water just off the boil, around 200F, rather than at a full rolling boil, which is generally held to pull out harsher, bitter compounds.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, born enslaved in Tennessee, who spent years cooking in Chicago restaurants and then in Pullman private railroad cars before taking charge of the kitchens at a Chicago steel company. His book is generally recognised as one of the first cookbooks published by an African American chef. The terseness of this entry is telling: coffee needed no explanation to his readers, only a proportion.