The first year we came to this country, I met with an account of
dandelion coffee, published in the _New York Albion_, given by a Dr.
Harrison, of Edinburgh, who earnestly recommended it as an article of
general use.
“It possesses,” he says, “all the fine flavour and exhilarating
properties of coffee, without any of its deleterious effects. The plant
being of a soporific nature, the coffee made from it when drank at night
produces a tendency to sleep, instead of exciting wakefulness, and
may be safely used as a cheap and wholesome substitute for the Arabian
berry, being equal in substance and flavour to the best Mocha coffee.”
I was much struck with this paragraph at the time, and for several years
felt a great inclination to try the Doctor's coffee; but something
or other always came in the way, and it was put off till another
opportunity. During the fall of '35, I was assisting my husband in
taking up a crop of potatoes in the field, and observing a vast number
of fine dandelion roots among the potatoes, it brought the dandelion
coffee back to my memory, and I determined to try some for our supper.
Without saying anything to my husband, I threw aside some of the
roots, and when we left work, collecting a sufficient quantity for, the
experiment, I carefully washed the roots quite clean, without depriving
them of the fine brown skin which covers them, and which contains the
aromatic flavour, which so nearly resembles coffee that it is difficult
to distinguish it from it while roasting. I cut my roots into small
pieces, the size of a kidney-bean, and roasted them on an iron
baking-pan in the stove-oven, until they were as brown and crisp as
coffee. I then ground and transferred a small cupful of the powder to
the coffee-pot, pouring upon it scalding water, and boiling it for a few
minutes briskly over the fire. The result was beyond my expectations.
The coffee proved excellent--far superior to the common coffee we
procured at the stores.
To persons residing in the bush, and to whom tea and coffee are very
expensive articles of luxury, the knowledge of this valuable property
in a plant, scattered so abundantly through their fields, would prove
highly beneficial. For years we used no other article; and my Indian
friends who frequented the house gladly adopted the root, and made me
show them the whole process of manufacturing it into coffee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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