Page:Food and cookery for the sick and convalescent.djvu/100

66 but not to as great an extent as tea. When there is a flatulent state of the stomach, tea increases the amount of gas, in which case coffee is to be preferred. When taken in excess coffee produces biliousness, languor, restlessness, heartburn, palpitation of the heart, tremor, dyspepsia, and insomnia.

Many preparations have been put upon the market as coffee substitutes, but to the coffee drinker there is no substitute. They, however, make a pleasing hot beverage, and when properly made and served with sugar and cream, they have a food value. To the adult a single cup of coffee at breakfast and a single cup of tea at luncheon seldom prove harmful, and are acceptable to the average person.

Cocoa and chocolate are manufactured from the cacao bean of commerce. This bean, a native of Mexico, is the seed of a fruit from six to ten inches in length, containing from twenty to thirty seeds. The area of the cocoa belt for remunerative crops is limited, being chiefly confined to Mexico, South America, and the West Indies. The fruit matures throughout the year, taking four months for ripening; but the principal harvest is in the spring.

The fruit is gathered and allowed to remain in a heap on the ground for twenty-four hours, the pods are then cut open and the seeds removed, drained, and put in a sweating-box for two days to undergo the process of fermentation. The flavor of the bean depends largely upon the care taken during this process. Now the beans are dried in the sun, after which they are ready for exportation.

Having been exported in this crude state, they must be cleaned, assorted, and roasted; then the thin, brittle coverings removed by machinery. The thin coverings are sold under the name of cocoa shells. The broken roasted beans constitute cocoa nibs. Chocolate is the cocoa nibs crushed, pulverized, and moulded. Vanilla and sweet