Coffee and chicory : $b Their culture, chemical composition, preparation for market, and consumption, with simple tests for detecting adulteration, and practical hints for the producer and consumerSimmonds, P. L. (Peter Lund)
Science
Coffee and chicory : $b Their culture, chemical composition, preparation for market, and consumption, with simple tests for detecting adulteration, and practical hints for the producer and consumer
Simmonds, P. L. (Peter Lund)
Chicory; Coffee; Food adulteration and inspection
It has been understood for several years that much of the coffee which
finds its way into England as genuine Mocha is, in reality, Malabar
coffee, sent to ports on the Persian Gulf from Bombay, and when thus
naturalised, finding its way to Europe. But the coffee of India is now
competing successfully with that of Arabia in markets which the latter
had for centuries commanded as its own. In a few years the Indian
article will entirely surpass the Arabian. It is the old story of
enterprise originated and directed by Europeans driving competition out
of the market. Seeing that the Arabs are in the habit of baking the
cow-dung and cakes for food on the same wall, they cannot be suspected
of any violent antipathy to dirt _per se_. But, passionate lovers as
they are of a good cup of coffee, they can easily understand that an
equal quantity of well-cleaned Malabar coffee is cheaper than that
brought in the buggalows of the Nijd Arabs, and which is described as
full of extraneous matter, such as pieces of the coffee-husk, &c. But
the Indian coffee is actually sold cheaper, quantity for quantity. The
consumption of Yemen coffee is now entirely confined to the wealthier
chiefs; the finest kind, and that most sought after, being the small, of
a light-green colour. Latterly, the Yemen coffee has been all sent to
Bagdad, a compliment which the ancient city of the Sultans cannot fail
to appreciate at its true value. It is too dear and too dirty for the
poor Arabs of Bussorah, while the flavour of the Malabar kind is found
closely to approximate to that of Yemen.
The coffee is generally grown half way up the slopes of the hills, but
some is cultivated on lower ground, surrounded by large trees for shade.
The harvest is gathered at three periods of the year, the principal
being in May. Cloths are spread under the trees, which are shaken, that
the ripe fruit may drop. The berries are then collected and exposed to
the sun on mats to dry. A heavy roller is afterwards passed over the
berries, to break the envelopes, and the husk is winnowed away with a
fan. The berries are further dried before being stored.
Arabian coffee was first cultivated by the Dutch, and some of their
plants sent by the French to the West Indies, where it is now
successfully cultivated. So that one has a difficulty in deciding where
it is indigenous, as it is a much more important article of agriculture
in the West Indies, Java, Ceylon, and Southern India, than in its native
countries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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