Notice has already been made of the different kinds of coffee, but not
the West African species—the Liberian coffee (_Coffea Liberica_)—which
has not, as yet, come into common use in England. There are many
substitutes for coffee, one of which developed a few years since into
a large commercial undertaking, but eventually collapsed. It was
Date Coffee, made out of date stones roasted and ground. Among other
substances used in lieu of coffee, are the roasted seeds of the yellow
water-lily (_Iris pseudocorus_); the seeds of a _Goumelia_, called in
Turkey _Keuguel_; roasted acorns and beans, chick peas, rye and other
grains, nuts, almonds, and dandelion roots (_Leontodon taraxacum_),
whilst in Africa many berries are used in its stead.
J. A.
[Illustration]
COCOA.
Where Cocoa is Grown—Its Manufacture—Its Use Abroad
and in England—Cocoa as a Drink—Chocolate, Edible and
Otherwise—Substitutes for Cocoa.
Linnæus was so fond of the drink made from the seeds of this plant that
he gave it the name of _Cacao Theobroma_, or “Food of the Gods.”
As a drink it cannot be classed among the infusions, like tea, nor is it
roasted and ground to powder like coffee; but the seeds are crushed and
mealed in a mill, and from this oily meal is made the thin gruel which we
drink as cocoa.
It seems to have been originally a native of Mexico, and is now
cultivated there, in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, Peru,
Ecuador, New Granada, Venezuela, Guiana, and most of the West India
Islands. Commercially the different sorts rank in value as follow:
Trinidad, Caraccas, Grenada, Guayaquil, Surinam, Bahia, Ceylon, and
British West Indies.
It grows, as we see in the illustration, somewhat like a melon, which
contains some fifty or more seeds, in rows embedded in a spongy
substance, from which the seeds are cleansed and then dried in the sun,
when it becomes brittle and of a dark colour internally, eating like an
oily nut, but with a decidedly bitter and somewhat astringent taste.
To render it fit for food, it is gently roasted to develop the aroma,
allowed to cool, deprived of its husk, and then crushed into small
fragments called cocoa nibs, which is the purest form in which it is
used, but also the one which entails the greatest trouble in making a
drink therefrom. The granulated, rock, flake, and soluble cocoas are
made by the beans being ground into a paste in a rolling mill; starch,
flour, sugar, and other ingredients being used, according to the taste of
different manufacturers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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