[MR] Re: Coffee in period

[Lisa and Ken Theriot]

Charles asked:

[So, here is the question: How old is the practice of adding spice to 
coffee, and which spices were popular in period?  Cinnamon?  Cardamom? 
 Clove?
We just heard a long list of original additives to chocolate, including 
cayenne and even ambergris of all things.  How about coffee?]

Also from Toussaint-Samat:

"The Arabs often flavour coffee with cardamom, either adding a few seeds to 
the beans before they are ground, or sometimes, as an added refinement, 
opening a capsule full of seeds and wedging it into the spout of the coffee 
pot.  As the coffee is poured, it is filtered for a second time, through 
the cardamom, which imparts a delicious flavour."

T-S has a whole chapter on the history of coffee (called "Coffee and 
Politics").  The opening paragraph says:

"According to Louis Figuier, coffee seems to have been drunk in Persia 
since the ninth century.  The great doctor Abu ibn Sina, known in the West 
as Avicenna, the prince of physicians, was already acquainted with coffee 
around the year 1000, and called it not _kahwa_ but _bunc_, the name by 
which it is still known in Abyssinia."

There's no other discussion of additives in period, but the chapter on 
sugar states that the demand for coffee accordingly increased the demand 
for sugar.  An Arab legend about the "discovery" of coffee (first printed, 
though, in 1670) mentions the discoverer mixing honey with the coffee when 
he found it unpalatably bitter.  Sadly, the Viennese seem to be the first 
to add cream, sometime after 1683 (shortly thereafter, it was made into an 
ice, so we only missed coffee ice cream by 100 years or so...).  In fact, a 
17th century medical treatise cautions that coffee taken mixed with milk 
can give you leprosy, though straight it was apparently good for 
consumption, ophthalmic catarrh, dropsy, gout, scurvy, and smallpox.  Who 
knew?


Adelaide