Notice has already been made of the different kinds of coffee, but not the West African species—the Liberian coffee (Coffea Liberica)—which has not, as yet, come into common use in England. There are many substitutes for coffee, one of which developed a few years since into a large commercial undertaking, but eventually collapsed. It was Date Coffee, made out of date stones roasted and ground. Among other substances used in lieu of coffee, are the roasted seeds of the yellow water-lily (Iris pseudocorus); the seeds of a Goumelia, called in Turkey Keuguel; roasted acorns and beans, chick peas, rye and other grains, nuts, almonds, and dandelion roots (Leontodon taraxacum), whilst in Africa many berries are used in its stead.
J. A.
COCOA.
Where Cocoa is Grown—Its Manufacture—Its Use Abroad and in England—Cocoa as a Drink—Chocolate, Edible and Otherwise—Substitutes for Cocoa.
Linnæus was so fond of the drink made from the seeds of this plant that he gave it the name of Cacao Theobroma, or “Food of the Gods.”
As a drink it cannot be classed among the infusions, like tea, nor is it roasted and ground to powder like coffee; but the seeds are crushed and mealed in a mill, and from this oily meal is made the thin gruel which we drink as cocoa.
It seems to have been originally a native of Mexico, and is now cultivated there, in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, New Granada, Venezuela, Guiana, and most of the West India Islands. Commercially the different sorts rank in value as follow: Trinidad, Caraccas, Grenada, Guayaquil, Surinam, Bahia, Ceylon, and British West Indies.
It grows, as we see in the illustration, somewhat like a melon, which contains some fifty or more seeds, in rows embedded in a spongy substance, from which the seeds are cleansed and then dried in the sun, when it becomes brittle and of a dark colour internally, eating like an oily nut, but with a decidedly bitter and somewhat astringent taste. To render it fit for food, it is gently roasted to develop the aroma, allowed to cool, deprived of its husk, and then crushed into small fragments called cocoa nibs, which is the purest form in which it is used, but also the one which entails the greatest trouble in making a drink therefrom. The granulated, rock, flake, and soluble cocoas are made by the beans being ground into a paste in a rolling mill; starch, flour, sugar, and other ingredients being used, according to the taste of different manufacturers.