A mere decoction of green coffee is a most insipid drink, but carbonization develops the aroma and forms an oil which is the peculiarity of the coffee we drink, and which would have been eternally unknown but for the intervention of heat.

The Turks excel us in this.  They employ no mill to torturate the coffee, but beat it with wooden pestles in mortars.  When the pestles have been long used, they become precious and are sold at great prices.

I had to examine and determine whether in the result one or the other of the two methods be preferable.

Consequently, I burned carefully a pound of good mocha, and separated it into two equal portions, the one of which was passed through the mill, and the other beaten Turkish fashion in a mortar.

I made coffee of each, taking equal weights of each, poured on an equal weight of boiling water and treated them both precisely alike.

I tasted this coffee myself, and caused others who were competent judges to do so.  The unanimous opinion was that coffee which had been beaten in a mortar was far better than that which had been ground.

Any one may repeat the experiment.  In the interim I will tell you a strange anecdote of the influence of one or the other kind of manipulation.

“Monsieur,” said Napoleon, one day to Laplace, “how comes it that a glass of water into which I put a lump of loaf sugar tastes more pleasantly than if I had put in the same quantity of crushed sugar.”  “Sire,” said the philosophic Senator, “there are three substances the constituents of which are identical—­Sugar, gum and amidon; they differ only in certain conditions, the secret of which nature has preserved.  I think it possible that in the effect produced by the pestle some saccharine particles become either gum or amidon, and cause the difference.”

This remark became public, and ulterior observations has confirmed it.

Different modes of preparing coffee.

Some years ago all directed their attention to the mode of preparing coffee; the reason doubtless was that the head of the government was fond of it.

Some proposed not to burn nor to powder it, to boil it three quarters of an hour, to strain it, &c.

I have tried this and all the methods which have been suggested from day to day, and prefer that known as a la Dubelloy, which consists in pouring boiling water on coffee placed in a porcelain or silver vessel pierced with a number of very minute holes.  This first decoction should be taken and brought to the boiling point, then passed through the strainer again, and a coffee will be obtained clear and strong as possible.

I have also tried to make coffee in a high pressure boiling apparatus; all I obtained however was a fluid intensely bitter, and strong enough to take the skin from the throat of a Cossack.

Effects of coffee.