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| 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
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.
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.
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,
https://ia801306.us.archive.org/11/items/b21471745/b21471745.pdf, accessed 1/5/20
“What
is Hartshorn?”, What’s Cooking America, https://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/hartshorn.htm,
accessed 1/5/20
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