If you wish to have really strong coffee, allow a cup of freshly-ground coffee to a quart of boiling water. Put the coffee in a bowl and wet with half a cup of cold water. Stir in the white and shell of a raw egg, and turn into a clean, newly-scalded coffee-boiler. Shut down the top and shake hard up and down half a dozen times before pouring in the boiling water. Set where it will boil hard, but not run over, for twenty minutes, draw to the side of the range and check the boil suddenly by pouring in a third of a cup of cold water. Let it stand three minutes to settle, and pour off gently into the pot which is to be set on the table.
Scald the milk to be drunk with coffee, unless you can serve really rich cream with it.
Tea.
First rule. The water should boil.
Second rule. The water in which the tea is steeped, must be boiling.
Third rule. The water used for filling the pot must be boiling.
I speak within bounds when I say that I could tell on the fingers of my two hands the tables at which I have drunk really good, hot, fresh tea. Sometimes it is made with boiling water, then allowed to simmer on the range or hob until the decoction is rank, reedy and bitter. Sometimes too little tea is put in, and the beverage, while hot enough, is but faintly colored and flavored.
Oftenest of all, the tea is made with unboiled water, or with water that did boil once, but is now flat and many degrees below the point of ebullition.
Scald the china, or silver, or tin teapot from which the beverage is to flow directly into the cups; put in an even teaspoonful of tea for each person who is to partake of it, pour in a half-cup of boiling water and cover the pot with a cozy or napkin for five minutes. Then, fill up with boiling water from the kettle and take to the table. Fill the cups within three minutes or so and you have the fresh aroma of the delicious herb.