COFFEE, TEA AND CHOCOLATE

Coffee is more heating and stimulating than tea. The former excites the pulse, the latter quiets it. Coffee may act as a laxative; tea dimin- ishes the action of the bowels and promotes perspiration. Coffee may produce headache; tea frequently relieves it. Both have power to sustain under fatigue and privation, coffee being particularly active in this direction. Hunger is better borne by their aid. Tea disposes to mental cheerfulness and activity, clears the brain, and diminishes the tendency to sleep. Coffee produces simple wakefulness. If used to excess, they both produce tremor, palpitation, anxiety, and deranged vision, and seriously impair digestion. Coffee is heating in warm weather and warming in cold. They are both to be recommended, because they introduce a part of the necessary amount af water needed, because they act as gentle stimulants, and because the milk and sugar added to make them agreeable, furnishes nutriment to the body.

Cocoa possesses in a milder degree the properties of tea or coffee, but it differs from them in possessing much higher nutritive powers.

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With regard to the quality of coffee, the best is the cheapest. Burn it at home, in small quantities, taking care in using a close roaster, never to fill it more than half. Turn the roaster, slowly at first, more rapidly as the process advances, keeping up a lively fire. Burn it until of a light chestnut color. Keep it in close canisters or bottles. Grind it as wanted. Boil it in a vessel only half full, to prevent boiling over, in proportion of one and a half ounces to a pint of water. Put in a few hartshorn shavings or isinglass, if you w[ll, but if the coffee is taken off the fire while boihng, and set on again, alternately, until nothing remains on the top but a clear bubble, and then some poured out to clear the pipe and poured back again, it will be as fine as if cleared artificially. Long boiling does not make coffee stronger, but destroys its color and makes it turbid. In making coffee the broader the bottom of the pot and the smaller the top the better it will prove.

Various are the methods of preparing this " beverage of Arabia ;" but it will be found, after all, that there is no surer way of having coffee clear and strong than by pursuing the plan here given : Beat up an egg (two for a large pot) and mix it well with the coffee till you have formed a ball ; fill the pot with cold water, allowing room enough to put in the ingredients ; let it simmer very gently for an hour, but do not think of stirring it, on any account. Just before it is required, put the pot on the fire and warm it well ; but, as you value the true aroma, take care that it does not boil. Pour off gently, and you will have as pure and as strong an extract of the Indian berry as you can desire. Use white sugar candy, in powder, in preference to sugar. Cream, if attainable ; if not, boiled milk.

A celebrated cook gives this receipt for making a good cup of coffee : Use Java and Mocha mixed. For each tablespoonful of coffee use nearly a pint of boiling water. Beat the coffee up with the white of an egto 3.nd half a tablespoonful of cold water. Pour the boiling water over this and allow it to boil once. Take it from the fire and then replace long enough to come to the boiling point.

A Frenchman roasts coffee, grinds it to a flour, moistens it slightly, mixes it with twice its weight of sugar, and then presses it into tablets. One of these tablets can be dissolved at any time.

Be careful in the choice of coffee pot and keep it clean. A carelessly kept coffee pot will impart a rank flavor to the strongest infusion of the best Java. Wash the coffee pot thoroughly every day and twice a week boil borax and water in it for fifteen minutes.