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Coffee

a beverage, and at one remove an important food flavouring, made from roasted beans of the coffee plant, mainly Coffea arabica. Other species are C. robusta (now reclassified as C. canephora), and a couple of minor ones suited to the climate of W. Africa.

The earliest written mention of the drink is in the work of Rhazes, an Arabian physician active in the 10th century, but cultivation may have begun several centuries earlier. A rich mythology, full of dancing goats and sleepy monks, was woven around the discovery of the plant in Arabia.

Legend and history seem to agree that the berries were eaten whole at first, or mixed with fat. Later, the fermented pulp was used for a kind of wine, and in about ad 1000 a decoction was made of the dried fruit, beans, hull, and all. The practice of roasting the beans was started around the 13th century. In Yemen, by the end of the century, the beverage had acquired its name, Qahwah, originally a poetic name for wine. This may reflect the excitement felt in Sufi circles at the discovery of a drink to replace wine in religious ceremonies. Whether or not this is true, it seems likely that its stimulant properties were welcomed as a means of prolonging hours of prayer. These stimulant properties are due to caffeine; see the box.

Dervishes and Muslim pilgrims were largely responsible for spreading the use of coffee throughout the Middle and Near East and N. Africa, by the end of the 15th century. Intensive cultivation had by now begun in the Yemen, using plants from Ethiopia, where they originated. Hattox (1985) describes its spread through the Islamic world as well as its apparently ineluctable manifestation as a social drink consumed in coffee houses (French, cafés), see café.

The arrival of coffee in W. Europe and the question often posed, where were the first European coffee houses? has set many pens in motion. It does seem that Venice, or anyway Italy, had the honour of being the pioneer. However, France (to whom the honour was accorded by Emerson, 1908) was certainly among the pioneers, apparently antedating Britain by several years.

Its popularity in France appears to have been given a boost, a little later, by the exotic parties given by the Turkish Ambassador there in 1688–9. The heady atmosphere of these occasions is captured by Isaac d'Israeli in his Curiosities of Literature (1817):

On bended knee, the black slaves of the Ambassador, arrayed in the most gorgeous Oriental costumes served the choicest Mocha coffee in tiny cups of egg-shell porcelain, hot, strong and fragrant, poured out in saucers of gold and silver, placed on embroidered silk doylies fringed with gold bullion, to the grand dames, who fluttered their fans with many grimaces, bending their piquant faces—be-rouged, be-powdered and be-patched—over the new and steaming beverage.

References to coffee in the writings of various English travellers to the East had occurred as early as 1599 (Anthony Sherley's description of ‘damned infidells drinking a certaine liquor, which they do call Coffe’). The first British coffee house was opened in Oxford in 1650 by Jacob, a Turkish Jew. Two years later, Pasqua Rosee, who was either Armenian or Greek, opened one in London.

Coffee has been seen as a subversive substance at various points in its history. At one time, Islam perceived the conviviality it fostered as a threat to religious life; the mosques were empty, the coffee houses full. At another time, as Kolpas (1979) explains, authorities in the Vatican saw coffee as a threat to Christianity, ‘Satan's latest trap to catch Christian souls’. Fortunately the then Pope, Clement VIII, did not fall for this line of thought. The story goes that he demanded to taste coffee and then announced that this was something which Christianity must make its own.

During the first half of the 18th century coffee plants reached the New World and their cultivation on a much larger scale began, leading to the present situation when many countries are competing. Brazil is the largest producer in quantity. Jamaica (the Blue Mountain estates) is widely thought of as producing the very finest coffee. Mexico produces much and so does Indonesia (where the coffee of Sumatra is most highly esteemed). S. India is another important region of production; and, in Africa, Kenya and Tanzania have joined Ethiopia in that role. The coffees of all these places have their special characteristics; indeed, qualities vary from estate to estate, since the nature of the soil, the altitude, and many other factors all make significant differences—as in wine-making. And, again as with wine, a whole complex system of nomenclature and description has grown up. However, as Davids (1976), the best guide to this and several other aspects of the subject, points out, the labelling of coffee constitutes a much less satisfactory source of information than what one finds on wine labels.

However, coffee is not a food, and coffee terminology and nomenclature hardly enter at all into the food uses of coffee, for example as a flavouring, especially for ice cream, in various desserts, and in confectionery. In recipes involving those functions, it is usually prescribed as just ‘coffee’, or ‘strong coffee’.

Coffee flavouring combines well with chocolate. See also mocha.

For the imposing battery of equipment (especially the world-conquering Italian espresso machine) with which it is processed and brewed, see the great work of Ukers mentioned below (for the historical side) and Bersten (1993) for a more recent and highly illustrated survey.

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