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Turkish Coffee
Boil 8 coffee cupfuls of cold water, add 8 teaspoonfuls of sugar and 12 spoonfuls of ground Mocha; stir it; when it bubbles, take it off. Do this 3 times. Then let it settle; pour it equally into each cup.
A workable method, though the measurements assume a coffee service no longer standard in most kitchens. The technique — raising the pot to a foam three times without letting it actually boil over — is the whole point.
- Coffee cupfulsGiven the title, this is probably the small handleless demitasse of a Turkish service, roughly 2 to 2.5 fl oz, though in American cookbooks of the period a "coffee cup" was often a larger measure. On the demitasse reading, eight of them come to roughly 16 to 20 fl oz (475-600 ml) of water.
- "12 spoonfuls"The original switches from "teaspoonfuls" of sugar to bare "spoonfuls" of coffee, and the intended size is genuinely ambiguous. Twelve teaspoons of powder-fine coffee to 2 cups of water is strong but plausible; twelve tablespoons would be closer to mud. Start with the smaller reading.
- MochaNot chocolate. Mocha meant coffee shipped through the Yemeni port of Mokha, long prized for its winey depth. Any good Arabica will do, but the grind matters more than the origin.
- The grindIt must be ground to a flour, finer than espresso. Ordinary drip grind will not stay suspended and will not settle cleanly, and the cup will be gritty rather than silky. A burr grinder on its finest setting or a dedicated Turkish grinder is the practical route.
- The three risingsTake the pot off the heat the moment the surface domes and foams — before a true rolling boil. Boiling drives off the aromatics and collapses the foam that the method exists to build. Three cycles over low heat takes only a few minutes total.
- Stir once, earlyStir the sugar and coffee into the water at the start. After the third rising, leave it strictly alone so the grounds sink.
- VesselThe recipe names no pot. The method suits an ibrik or cezve -- a narrow-necked long-handled vessel, which is what makes the foam column possible -- though eight cupfuls at once is a large charge for one. A small deep saucepan works, but the foam is harder to control.
- ServingYields eight demitasse servings. Divide the foam among the cups first, then pour the coffee down the side; let each cup stand a moment and drink to within a finger of the sludge.
The three-boil method is one common form of the technique used across the former Ottoman world, where the same coffee is called Turkish, Greek, Armenian, or Arabic depending on who is pouring; the sugar going in with the grounds rather than at the table is part of the same tradition, since there is no way to stir a finished cup without rousing the sediment. "Mocha" as a synonym for fine coffee, used here as a bean name, is a survival from the period when Yemen was the dominant exporter and the port of Mokha its outlet; the word later drifted toward its modern chocolate association.