The Duparquet

Still's machine

The Kellum

Three Well Known Makes of Large Coffee Urns

France. Also about the middle of the nineteenth century the French naturalist, Du Tour, thus describes one manner of making coffee in France:

Let the powder be poured into the coffee-pot filled with boiling water, in the proportion of two ounces and a half to two pounds, or two English pints of water. Let the mixture be stirred with a spoon, and the coffee-pot be soon taken off the fire, but suffered to remain closely shut, for about at least two hours, on the warm ashes of a wood fire. During the infusion the liquor should be several times agitated by a chocolate frother, or something of the same kind, and be finally left for about a quarter of an hour to settle.

Café au lait was not made by boiling coffee and milk together, as milk was not proper to extract the coffee; the coffee was first made as café noir, only stronger; as much of this coffee was poured in the cup as was required, and the cup was then filled up with boiled milk. Café a la crème, was made by adding boiled cream to strong clear coffee and heating them together.

In France, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, coffee was roasted over charcoal fires in earthenware dishes or saucepans, stirred with a spatula or wooden spoon, or in small cylinder or globular roasters of iron. Gas roasting was also practised. When roasted in large batches, the beans were cooled in wicker baskets, tossed into the air. The grinding was preferably done in mortars or in box mills of pyramid shape with receiving drawers, and was not too fine.

The usual method of making coffee in France among the better classes at this time was by means of improved De Belloy drip devices, double glass vacuum filters, pumping percolators (double circulation devices), the Russian egg-shaped pots, and the Viennese machines. The last-named were metal pumping percolators with glass tops, usually swung between the uprights of a carry arrangement, the base of which held a spirit lamp.

Among the numerous French machines which became well known were: Reparlier's glass "filter"; Egrot's steam cloth-filter machine and Malen's percolator apparatus, both designed for barracks and ships, where previously the coffee had been brewed in soup kettles; Bouillon Muller's steam percolator; Laurent's whistling coffee pot, a steam percolator which announced when the coffee was ready; Ed. Loysel's rapid filter, a hydrostatic percolator; and those pots to which Morize, Lemare, Grandin, Crepaux, and Gandais gave their names.

In 1892, the French minister of war directed that, in the army roasting and grinding operations, the coffee chaff should no longer be thrown away, as it had been found that it was rich in caffein and aroma constituents.