Foods and Household Management: A Textbook of the Household ArtsKinne, Helen
General
Foods and Household Management: A Textbook of the Household Arts
Kinne, Helen
Cooking; Food; Home economics
The adulterations of coffee should be noted, although these are of the
kind that gives the buyer something cheaper in place of coffee, rather
than a substance that is injurious. Ground chicory root is sometimes mixed
with coffee, but cannot be classed strictly as an adulterant, because
many people, notably the French, add it openly, preferring its flavor.
Among adulterants are rye meal, bran, beans and peas, cocoa shells, and
even sawdust. Artificial beans have been made of bran, molasses, and
water, sometimes with the addition of chicory and coloring matter. If
ground coffee is put into a glass of cold water, it floats on the top and
remains hard, while several of the adulterants named soften and sink to
the bottom of the glass. Highly roasted coffee, however, will sometimes
sink. Coffee beans from which coffee extract has been made are sometimes
mixed with other coffee.
Coffee extracts and crystallized coffee are manufactured to simplify the
coffee-making process, but the flavor is not equal to that of coffee
infusion made directly from the bean. A preparation of coffee is also
offered with the caffeine removed by some chemical process, but it is
expensive in this country.
Buy coffee in the bean, and see that it is freshly roasted. Coffee, whole
or ground, is sold extensively by the pound in tin cans, with a fancy
label and name, and in this form it is usually expensive. Good coffee may
be bought for twenty-five cents a pound of many reliable dealers, and may
be purchased in five or ten pound packages, or bought in bulk to be kept
in a tightly closed can.
_Tea_ is the dried leaf of a shrub, _Camellia thea_, growing in the
comparatively high lands of Japan, China, India, and Ceylon. A tea
plantation exists in South Carolina, U.S.A., and furnishes a very pleasing
grade of tea, somewhat resembling Japan tea in flavor. We are familiar
with the fact that there are many kinds and grades of tea, the tea shrub
varying as does the coffee tree, and the methods of curing affecting both
color and flavor. The teas from the countries named have characteristic
flavors, and each country has different varieties and grades. Russian tea
is not grown in Russia, but is Chinese tea carried across the continent of
Asia.
In general, tea may be classed as green or black, this difference in color
depending upon the age of the leaf, and largely upon differences in the
curing process. Green tea is made from the young leaf, and after picking
is dried immediately by artificial heat, being constantly stirred for
about an hour, in which time the leaves twist and curl. For black tea the
leaves are allowed to wilt and ferment, before they are rolled and heated;
and sometimes the heating is repeated. These details of the process vary
in different localities. The leaves are finally sorted and graded for
packing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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