All About Coffee

by William H. Ukers

Chapter XXXV

WORLD'S COFFEE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

How coffee is roasted, prepared, and served in all the leading civilized countries—The Arabian coffee ceremony—The present-day coffee houses of Turkey—Twentieth-century improvements in Europe and the United States

Coffee manners and customs have shown little change in the Orient in the six hundred-odd years since the coffee drink was discovered by Sheik Omar in Arabia. As a beverage for western peoples, however, and more particularly in America, there have been many improvements in making and serving it.

A brief survey of the coffee conventions and coffee service in the principal countries where coffee has become a fixed item in the dietary is presented here, with a view to show how different peoples have adapted the universal drink to their national needs and preferences.

To proceed in alphabetical order, and beginning with Africa, coffee drinking is indulged in largely in Abyssinia, Algeria, Egypt, Portuguese East Africa, and the Union of South Africa.

Coffee Manners and Customs in Africa

In Abyssinia and Somaliland, among the native population, the most primitive methods of coffee making still obtain. Here the wandering Galla still mix their pulverized coffee beans with fats as a food ration, and others of the native tribes favor the kisher, or beverage made from the toasted coffee hulls. An hour's boiling produces a straw-colored decoction, of a slightly sweetish taste. Where the Arabian customs have taken root, the drink is prepared from the roasted beans after the Arabian and Turkish method. The white inhabitants usually prepare and serve the beverage as in the homeland; so that it is possible to obtain it after the English, French, German, Greek, or Italian styles. Adaptations of the French sidewalk café, and of the Turkish coffee house, may be seen in the larger towns.

In the equatorial provinces of Egypt, and in Uganda, the natives eat the raw berries; or first cook them in boiling water, dry them in the sun, and then eat them. It is a custom to exchange coffee beans in friendly greeting.