“The bruised or ground beans are thrown into a small brass or copper saucepan; sufficient water, scalding hot, is poured upon them, and, after being allowed to simmer for a few seconds, the liquid is poured into small cups, without refining or straining. Persons unaccustomed to this way of making coffee find it unpalatable. Those who have overcome the first introduction prefer it to that made after the French fashion, whereby the aroma is lost or deteriorated. A well made cup of good Turkish coffee is indeed the most delectable beverage, that can be well imagined, being grateful to the senses and refreshingly stimulant to the nerves. Those who have long resided in the East can alone estimate its merits.”—White’s Three Years in Constantinople.
“The Turkish way of making coffee produces a very different result from that to which we are accustomed. A small conical saucepan, with a long handle, and calculated to hold about two table-spoonfuls of water, is the instrument used. The fresh roasted berry is pounded, not ground, and about a dessert-spoonful is put into the minute boiler; it is then nearly filled with water, and thrust among the embers; a few seconds suffice to make it boil, and the decoction, grounds and all, is poured into a small cup, which fits into a brass socket much like the cup of an acorn, and holding the china cup as that does the acorn itself. The Turks seem to drink this decoction boiling, and swallow the grounds with the liquid. We allow it to remain a minute, in order to leave the sediment at the bottom. It is always taken plain; sugar or cream would be thought to spoil it; and Europeans, after a little practice (longer, however, than we had), are said to prefer it to the clear infusion drunk in France. In every hut you will see these coffee-boilers suspended, and the means for pounding the roasted berry will be found at hand.”—Christmas’s Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean.
“A small vessel, containing about a wine-glass of water, is placed on the fire, and, when boiling, a teaspoonful of ground coffee is put into it, stirred up, and it is suffered to boil and ‘bubble’ a few seconds longer, when it is poured (grounds and all) into a cup about the size of an egg-shell, encased in gold or silver filigree-work, to protect the finger from the heat; and the liquid, in its scalding, black, thick, and troubled state, is imbibed with the greatest relish. Like smoking, it must be quite an acquired taste.”—Maxwell’s Shores of the Mediterranean.
CHICORY
SECTION I.
INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND.—CONTINENTAL PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION.
The term chicory is an Anglicised French word, the original being chicorée. The plant is known to botanists by the name of Cichorium Intybus, and belongs to the natural order Compositæ, tribe Cichoreæ. It is an indigenous plant with a perennial root, better known probably to most readers by its English appellation of wild succory. The root is spindle-shaped, with a single or double head; externally it is whitish or greenish yellow; internally, whitish, fleshy, and milky. The roots grown in this country are smaller, and more woody or fibrous than those which are imported from the Continent.
The cultivation and consumption of chicory have now attained a very great importance, not only on the Continent, but also in the United Kingdom. Dating its extended use chiefly from the system pursued by the first Napoleon to substitute home-grown for colonial products, it has gradually become approved and popularised for a beverage, either used alone or more generally mixed with coffee, in numerous countries, where it can be sold far under the price of even the lowest grade coffees.
The manufacture of a factitious coffee from roasted chicory-root would seem to have originated in Holland, where it has been used for more than a century. It remained a secret until 1801, when it was introduced into France by M. Orban of Liége, and M. Giraud of Homing, a short distance from Valenciennes. This root is not superior to many others which possess sweet and mucous principles, but of all the plants which have been proposed as substitutes for coffee, and which, when roasted and steeped in boiling water, yield an infusion resembling the berry, it is the only one which has maintained its ground. The French, not satisfied with chicory, have recently introduced acorn coffee and roasted beetroot. The beet, it is asserted, besides communicating its hygienic qualities, also helps to sweeten the beverage. This new coffee is called “café de betterave,” as the old was called “café chicorée.” These distinctions will soon become as puzzling as those in America, which led the Irish waiter to ask if the gentleman would have coffee-tay or tay-tay.
Mr. George Phillips, when giving evidence before Mr. Scholefield’s Parliamentary Committee on Adulteration, in 1855, stated that, prior to the year 1832, little was heard of the use of chicory in this country, but in the subsequent three years its use had gradually so increased that the Board of Inland Revenue was obliged to take steps against the sale. “I have no doubt (he adds), from my own experience, that a very large bulk of the public prefer the mixture. That, however, is a matter of taste. The trade contend that good coffee, mixed with one-eighth part of chicory, and sold at a moderate price, makes a better beverage than ordinary coffee would do at the same price, and the great mass of the public prefer it. Chicory sold as coffee yields a certain profit, but probably it equalises itself in the general competition of trade. There is a large quantity of chicory sold by itself, and drank as a beverage in the neighbourhood of Manchester and Liverpool. I believe the price of a pound of the cheapest kind of coffee, purchased by the bulk of the poor people, and a pound of the mixture, is about the same. The trade say, when we use a portion of chicory we use a better coffee. I do not know the fact of my own knowledge. Whether the coffee sold in mixtures is of a superior quality to that sold as a pure article would be very difficult to ascertain; it depends upon the question of taste and aroma. The chicory itself is not always pure.”
On the first introduction of chicory into Great Britain a nominal duty of 20 per cent. was levied on it, which, owing to the representations of the coffee-planters, was afterwards increased to the same rate as that then payable on British plantation coffee. The high duty thus levied on foreign-grown chicory soon led to its cultivation in England, but so little was known of the plant that the farmers required the rent to be paid in advance for the use of their land. In the autumn of 1853 we find chicory grown in Kent, Surrey, and Essex, where the article was prepared, and met with a large sale. With the increasing demand for the root, its culture spread to Bedford, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire. At first the price realised was as high as 50l. per ton ground, and 20l. per ton in the root. But as the growth extended the price receded. The admission, duty free, of foreign-grown chicory, in 1854, led to the abandonment of much of the home culture.