Sunday, January 12, 2020

Coffee, Tea or … Chocolate? Part Three ©


 
Photo by the Author.


As I mentioned last week, there is nothing better on a cold morning, in the wild parts of the world, than something hot to drink, and this week it is coffee!  In last week’s article (HERE), I discussed tea and before that (HERE) drinking chocolate: this week I am going to talk about coffee. 

When I am out in the woods with a group, I sometimes make a pot of coffee, over the fire, for everyone to enjoy.  For myself, I always make a nice strong brew-up of tea, not because I don’t like coffee – I love coffee! – but unfortunately, over ten years ago, I developed a food allergy to coffee. 

Now, it has always amazed me how few people know how to make coffee over a fire in this modern age of automatic drip, Keurig one-cup, instant and drive through windows!  So if you are a reenactor of the late 18th through the early 19th centuries, or an experimental archaeologist, or just one of those poor unfortunates who don’t know how to make a pot of coffee over a fire; read on and learn how, so you can impress your friends with your mad coffee skills.
 
An excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1810, page 246

We all know that coffee is made from the dried, roasted, crushed and steeped berries of the coffee tree.  But did you know that there are over 120 species of trees or shrubs in the coffea family, with only two species producing the entire world’s supply of coffee1.

Coffee trees produce edible red or purple berries, which are high in caffeine.  Inside these berries, which are sometimes called “cherries”, are, usually, two seeds called “coffee beans”, although they are not true beans.  Coffee beans, after they are removed from the fruit, are dried and then shipped green to their destination for roasting and grinding, because coffee beans keep and travel best when they are green.  Today, modern coffee drinkers, if they brew their own coffee, are accustomed to purchasing “freshly” roasted coffee that comes in a vacuum sealed and stabilized metal can2 or plastic pouch at their local store. 


 
Excerpts from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1810, page 247

Today coffee, at least in the United States is the number one hot drink.  And what most of us don’t know, is that during the late 18th and early 19th centuries coffee, at least in England and the United States, coffee was the third most popular hot drink; behind drinking chocolate and tea, in that order.  Also, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, coffee drinkers either drank ready-made coffee at their local coffee-house or sutler’s tent, or made coffee for themselves at home or around a campfire with either roasted or unroasted, green coffee beans, either whole or already ground, both which they could have purchased from a coffee-house, sutler or trader.

So, for modern reenactors and experimental archaeologists of the late 18th through early 19th centuries, who fancy a cup of joe, you have two options. 

Option one, “sneak-it-in”.  If there is a 18th century coffee-house, sutler’s tent or tavern near where you are reenacting, pour that Starbucks® or Tim Hortons® into your tin cup, drink up and interpret away, just hide the cup it came in!  Better yet support the coffee-house, sutler or tavern and stay in persona.
 
An excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1810, page 247

Option two, “brew-it-up-yourself”, and enjoy a cup of 18th century java around the campfire.  You can either use already roasted beans, in which case you can buy them already ground or grind them yourself, or you can buy them green and un-roasted and then roast and grind them yourself, for a truly homemade cup of coffee.  Bear in mind though that coffee beans are shipped green, because they keep and travel better that way, and so most beans that were purchased were probably un-roasted, green coffee beans.  In either case, use the recipes below to boil up an authentic late 18th and early 19th century cuppa brew. 
 
An excerpt from The House Book3, 4, 1826, page 591

Mark Baker, in A Pilgrim’s Journey, Vol. One, wrote an excellent article called “Corrections, Confessions and Challenges” in which he detailed how to make coffee in an 18th century fashion, from un-roasted, green coffee beans, that you roast yourself, before grinding them up with a belt axe or handy stick of fire wood, and then brew over an open fire.
 
An excerpt from “Corrections, Confessions and Challenges” by Mark Baker, page 277

And as always, Horace Kephart, gets the last word with his thoughts in Camp Cookery, about how to make coffee over a fire.
 
An excerpt from Camp Cookery, by Horace Kephart, pages 10 to 11.
 
An excerpt from Camp Cookery, by Horace Kephart, page 135.

Interestingly, Mr. Scott’s recipe instructs you to boil your coffee for about eleven minutes total before letting it warm for ten minutes by the fireside to settle.  Horace Kephart would have strongly disagreed, since he stated, “Do not let the coffee boil”. 

Maybe people in the 18th and early 19th centuries liked stronger and more bitter than did the people in the early 20th century.  More likely, since the early recipes call for serving the coffee with milk or cream, before adding sugar, they disguised the flavor of the coffee and it appears that Mr. Kephart, drank his coffee black, with perhaps just some sugar.

So, next time you are out in the woods, I hope you stop and have a nice hot cup of coffee made in an authentic late 18th century and early 19th century fashion.

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube, and if you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

That is all for now, and as always until next time, Happy Trails!


Notes

1 Coffea arabica, known as “arabica”, accounts for most of the world’s coffee production and coffea canephora, also known as “robusta”, on account of its high caffeine content, accounting for the remainder of the world’s crop.

2 A history of coffee first in the United States, from Frances H. Martin’s “A History of Coffee Prices in the United States, 1840 - 1954”, Monthly Labor Review, page 767, detailing that it wasn’t until 1878 that coffee was first packed and shipped in sealed containers and that vacuum packing didn’t start until 1898.

3 Interestingly, the excerpt from The House Book, 1826; is almost word-for-word identical, to Mrs. Maria Eliza Rudell’s recipe, from her 1807, A New System of Domestic Cookery. Apparently in the early 19th century, no had heard of copyrights!

4 Notes on the recipe

A coffee cup “officially” holds 6 ounces and this standard is based on the British tea cup and since an ounce is about 30 grams and each tablespoon holds about 5 grams or a 1/6 of an ounce of coffee grounds, this recipe calls for twelve tablespoons of coffee grounds for eight coffee cups or 48 ounces (approximately 1,440 ml) water.  As a note, a heaping or rounded tablespoon is equal to approximately 1-1/3 tablespoons.

Isinglass, is described by Joanne Major in her article “A brief history of coffee in the Georgian era” as a “clarifying collagen, produced from the swim bladders of fish, prior to 1795 from sturgeon but after that also from cod; nowadays we’d use gelatin”.  Also, she wrote that Lisbon sugar, was sugar which had been refined to remove the molasses.

In an article on What’s Cooking America, entitled “What is Hartshorn?”, the author wrote that “According to the Dictionary of American Food & Drink by John F. Mariani, Hartshorn – A source of ammonia used in baking cookies or, as ‘salt of hartshorn,’ as smelling salts.  Once the word meant literally the ground horn of a hart’s (male deer’s) antlers, but ammonium carbonate was later used as a substitute, which also went by the name of ‘salt of hartshorn’   Today hartshorn is called bakers’ ammonia or ammonium carbonate.

Sources

Baker, Mark A.; “Corrections, Confessions and Challenges”, Muzzleloader Magazine’s A Pilgrim’s Journey, Volume One: 1986-1995, [Scurlock Publishing Co., Inc. Texarkana, TX, 2004], p. 274-279

Encyclopædia Britannica or A dictionary, The Fourth Edition, Vol VI [Edinburgh, Andrew Bell, 1810] p. 246-248

Kephart, Horace; Camp Cookery, [Outing Publishing Company, New York, 1910], pages 11 and 135-136, https://archive.org/details/campcookery01keph/page/n7, accessed 12/28/19

Major, Joanne; “A brief history of coffee in the Georgian era”, All Things Georgian, April 12, 2018, https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2018/04/12/a-brief-history-of-coffee-in-the-georgian-era/, accessed 1/4/2020

Martin, Frances H., “A History of Coffee Prices in the United States, 1840 - 1954”, Monthly Labor Review, July 1954, Volume 77, Issue 7, [United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC] p. 767, https://books.google.com/books?id=oc-dP7K3i3AC&pg=PA767&lpg=PA767&dq=was+coffee+shipped+green+in+the18th+century&source=bl&ots=KY1sTGVJUn&sig=ACfU3U33MUxL5765RfqZx4liKRWBQOPmZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUntnhjfLmAhXDU80KHRv_CZgQ6AEwFHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=was%20coffee%20shipped%20green%20in%20the18th%20century&f=false, accessed 1/5/2020


Rundell, Mrs. Maria Eliza; A New System of Domestic Cookery, [Boston, 1807] p.259-260, https://archive.org/details/newsystemofdomes01rund/page/260, accessed 1/11/20

Scott, William, M.D. editor; The House Book, [Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, London, 1826], page 591,

“What is Hartshorn?”, What’s Cooking America, https://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/hartshorn.htm, accessed 1/5/20

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