Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/19

Rh evergreen, the foliage is always fresh; and though at certain seasons the blossoms suddenly appear scattered among the dark leaves like flakes of snow, they are hardly ever entirely absent. They continue to put forth while the fruit of former blossoms is coming to maturity, and so the ripe coffee may be gathered at almost every season; but the real harvests are usually two, and sometimes three, in the course of the year. The fruit when ripe becomes red and finally dark purple. It resembles a cherry, and the fleshy portion which surrounds the seeds is very sweet and palatable. Each berry contains two seeds; their flat sides are opposed to each other in the centre of the pulp, and are separated by a thin layer of this and by the tough membrane which closely envelopes both. Sometimes one seed is abortive, and the other becomes round. This is the case with the Wynaad coffee from India, and the so-called " male berry " coffee. As the fruit dries, the pulp forms a sort of shell or pod, which is removed by a process of curing in order to prepare the seed for market. In the West Indies the fruit is picked by hand at intervals during the seasons of harvest; but in Arabia, where no rains prevail which would beat it from the trees, it is allowed to remain till ready to fall, and is then shaken off upon cloths spread upon the ground. Its perfect ripeness may be one reason of its superior quality. It is next dried in the shade, and the pulp is afterward removed by hand. In the East and West Indies and South America the curing is usually performed by exposing a layer of the fruit several inches in thickness to the heat of the sun, so that fermentation takes place. When the moisture has disappeared, the dried fruit is passed between wooden rollers, and sometimes pounded in wooden mortars, and the pulp is then washed away. The tough membrane is separated after the seeds are dry by a similar process with a heavy pair of rollers. The chaff is next removed by winnowing. From Ethiopia the use of coffee is said to have been introduced into Persia as early as A. D. 875, and into Arabia from the latter country or from Africa about the 15th century. The earliest written accounts of the use of coffee are by Arabian writers of this period; and it appears that in the city of Aden it became in the latter half of this century a very popular drink, first with lawyers, studious persons, and those whose occupations required wakefulness at night, and soon after with all classes. Its use gradually extended to other cities, and to those on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. It is said to have been publicly sold in Constantinople in 1554, and to have found its way thence to Venice in 1615. Eauwolf, a German (in 1582) is said to be the first European who makes mention of it. The plant is described in the works De Plantis JEgypti and De Medicina jflgyptiorum of Prospero Alpini, 1591 and 1592. Burton in his "Anatomy of Melan207 VOL. v. 2 choly " (1621) is supposed to be the first English writer who notices it. "The Turks," he says, " have a drink called coffee (for they use no wine), so named of a berry as black as soot and as bitter, which they sip up as warm as they can suffer, because they find by experience that that kind of drink so used helpeth digestion and procureth alacrity." A Greek servant of a Turkey merchant opened the first coffee house in London in 1652, the first in England having been opened a year before at Oxford by a Jew, Jacob. At the close of the century the annual consumption of coffee in the kingdom amounted to about 100 tons. Its culture was introduced into Java from Arabia by the Dutch between 1680 and 1690, and it was thence extended throughout the East India islands. In 1715 Louis XIV. received from the magistrates of Amsterdam a fine coffee tree, then bearing both green and ripe fruit. This, according to Du Tour, was the stock of all the West India coffee. The Dutch introduced its cultivation into Surinam in 1718. (See H. Welter, Essai sur Vhistoire du cafe, Paris, 1868). The raw coffee beans are tough and horny, difficult to reduce to powder, and consequently require a preparatory roasting, that water may take up their soluble ingredients. Even after this the hardness of the fragments is such that the genuine particles may by this quality be distinguished from those of other substances used as adulterants. The average composition of raw coffee, as determined by M. Pay en, is in 100 parts: Cellulose 84-00 Water 12-00 Fat 10 to 13-00 Glucose, dextrine, and organic acid 15-50 Legumine and caseinc 10*00 Other nitrogenous substances 8-00 Caffeine (free) 0-80 Caffetannate of caffeine and potassium 8'5 to 5-00 Viscid essential oil (insoluble in water) 0-001 Aromatic oils, some lighter, others heavier than water. 0-002 Ash 6-70 Some authorities state that it contains from 6 to 8 per cent, of cane sugar; in the roasting this must be nearly or quite all converted into caramel. The most important principles are the caffeic acid, resembling in its astringent character, and also in containing much gluten, the tannin of tea; the alkaloid, caffeine, which is identical with the theine of tea; and the fragrant volatile oil, called caffeone. This oil is distinguished by the microscope in minute drops in the cells or between the outer membrane and the body of the seed, and may be taken up by distillation with water. Roasting disperses it through the solid substance, and in part or wholly expels it, if the process is pushed too far. The caffeic acid, especially, is modified by roasting, and is supposed by chemists to afford the greater portion of the flavor and peculiar properties of the coffee. The proportion of caffeine is only about one half that of theine in an equal weight of tea. (See .) Coffee when roasted loses its hygroscopic water, which should first be allowed to 207