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Coffee

kept long. Attention to the following circum- | well to take it for breakfast. It is of a rather stances is likewise necessary. 1. The plant should be grown in a dry situation and climate. 2.

The berries ought to be thoroughly ripe before they are gathered. 3. They ought to be well dried in the sun; and 4. Kept at a distance from any substance (as spirits, spices, dried fish, etc.) by which the taste and flavor of the berry may be injured.

To drink coffee in perfection, it should be made from the best Mocha or Java, or both mixed, carefully roasted, and after cooling for a few minutes, reduced to powder, and immediately infused; the decoction will then be of a superior description.

But for ordinary use, Java, Laguayra, Maracaibo, Rio and other grades of coffee may be used. An equal mixture of Mocha, Java and Laguayra make an excellent flavor. We have been recently shown (1865) some samples of African coffee from Liberia, which is said to possess a very superior flavor. The following mode of preparing it may be adopted: 1. The berries should be carefully roasted, by a gradual application of heat, browning, but not burning them. 2. Grinding the coffee is preferable to pounding, because the latter process is thought to press out and leave on the sides of the mortar some of the richer oily substances, which are not lost by grinding. 5. A filtrating tin or silver pot, with double sides, between which hot water must be poured, to prevent the coffee from cooling, as practised in Germany, is good. Simple decoction, in this implement, with boiling water, is all that is required to make a cup of good coffee; and the use of isinglass, the white of eggs, etc., to fine the liquor, is quite unnecessary. By this means, also, coffee is made quicker than tea. drying nature, and with corpulent habits it would also be advisable to take it for breakfast.

Arabian Method of Preparing Coffee.

The Arabians, when they take their coffee off the fire, immediately wrap the vessel in a wet cloth, which fines the liquor instantly, makes it cream at the top, and occasions a more pungent steam, which they take great pleasure in snuffing up as the coffee is pouring into the cups. They, like all other nations of the East, drink their coffee without sugar.

People of the first fashion use nothing but Sultana coffee, which is prepared in the following manner: Bruise the outward husk or dried pulp, and put it into an iron or earthen pan, which is placed upon a charcoal fire; then keep stirring it to and fro, until it becomes a little brown, but not of so deep a color as common coffee; then throw it into boiling water, adding at least the fourth part of the inward husks, which is then boiled together in the manner of other coffee. The husks must be kept in a very dry place, and packed up very close, for the least humidity spoils the flavor. The liquor prepared in this manner is esteemed preferable to any other. The French, when they were at the court of the king of Yemen, saw no other coffee drank, and they found the flavor of it very delicate and agreeable. There was no occato use sugar, as it had no bitter taste to correct. Coffee is less unwholesome in tropical than in other climates.

In all probability the Sultana coffee can only be made where the tree grows; for, as the husks have little substance if they are much dried, in order to send them to other countries, the agreeable flavor they had when fresh is greatly impaired. Improvement in making Coffee..

Generally, too little powder of the berry is given. It requires about one small cup of ground coffee to make four cups of decoction for the table. This is at the rate of an ounce of good powder to four common coffee cups. When the powder is put in the bag, as many cups of boiling water are poured over it as may be wanted, and if the quantity wanted is very small, so that after it is filtrated it does not reach the lower end of the bag, the liquor must be poured back three or four times, till it has acquired the necessary strength. | tom, thus admitting and confining a body of hot