In his The Greeks of the Present Day[371], Edmond François Valentin About says:
The coffee which is drunk in all the Greek houses rather astonishes the travellers who have neither seen Turkey nor Algeria. One is surprised at finding food in a cup in which one expected drink. Yet you get accustomed to this coffee-broth and end by finding it more savoury, lighter, more perfumed, and especially more wholesome, than the extract of coffee you drink in France.
Then About gives the recipe of his servant Petros, who is "the first man in Athens for coffee":
The grain is roasted without burning it; it is reduced to an impalpable powder, either in a mortar or in a very close-grained mill. Water is set on the fire till it boils up; it is taken off to throw in a spoonful of coffee, and a spoonful of pounded sugar for each cup it is intended to make; it is carefully mixed; the coffee pot is replaced on the fire until the contents seem ready to boil over; it is taken off, and set on again; lastly it is quickly poured into the cups. Some coffee drinkers have this preparation boiled as many as five times. Petros makes a rule of not putting his coffee more than three times on the fire. He takes care in filling the cups to divide impartially the coloured froth which rises above the coffee pot; it is the kaimaki of the coffee. A cup without kaimaki is disgraced.
When the coffee is poured out you are at liberty to drink it boiling and muddy, or cold and clear. Real amateurs drink it without waiting. Those who allow the sediment to settle down, do not do so from contempt, for they afterwards collect it with the little finger and eat it carefully.
Thus prepared, coffee may be taken without inconvenience ten times a day: five cups of French coffee could not be drunk with impunity every day. It is because the coffee of the Turks and the Greeks is a diluted tonic, and ours is a concentrated tonic.
I have met at Paris many people who took their coffee without sugar, to imitate the Orientals. I think I ought to give them notice, between ourselves, that in the great coffee-houses of Athens, sugar is always presented with the coffee; in the khans and second-rate coffee-houses, it is served already sugared; and that at Smyrna and Constantinople, it has everywhere been brought to me sugared.
Kranzler's, Unter den Linden, Berlin