Chapter 14
The Coffee Industry Awakens America
Coffee drinking was not unknown in America, but it wasn’t until the War of 1812, when both the supply of tea was cut off and French culture became popular, that the French custom of drinking coffee really came into its own. Brazilian coffee was cheaper than tea and geographically closer than the Far East, so Americans increased their daily intake. By 1850, coffee was already a key part of chuck wagon fare, and beans were carried out west by frontiersmen. Many Native Americans also got hooked, among them the Sioux, and in one particular case it was said that a cup of coffee was exchanged for a buffalo robe. Until the midnineteenth century, most coffee was purchased as green beans and then roasted at home, usually in a cast-iron skillet; home roasters were also available, although reportedly not very effective. By the 1840s, commercial coffee roasting had come into vogue; James W. Carter of Boston had invented the Carter pull-out roaster, which had huge perforated cylinders placed into brick ovens. These coffee-roasting houses were smoky places indeed—it was hard, dirty work—and many of the beans burned. Eventually, a better coffee roaster was invented by a Jabez Burns that was self-emptying and moved the beans around an inner chamber as the cylinder turned, making for a more even roast. Oddly enough, the invention that did the most to promote the sale of roasted coffee beans and spur the drinking of coffee was the paper bag that was invented in 1862 for selling peanuts.
The paper bag? John Arbuckle was a partner in a grocery store in Pittsburgh at the outset of the Civil War. He began to sell roasted coffee beans, with an egg and sugar glaze to “prevent staling,” in one-pound paper bags under the brand-name Ariosa. He was also a successful and aggressive marketer, whose advertising campaign featured a frustrated housewife lamenting, “Oh, I have Burnt my Coffee again!” The tagline for his ads was, “You cannot roast Coffee properly yourself,” and he claimed that every grain of his coffee was evenly roasted. Boston also had its hand in the promotion of coffee drinking through the firm of Chase & Sanborn, founded in 1878. Its marketing gimmick was the sale of roasted coffee beans in specially designed sealed tin cans. The factory was on Broad Street, and by 1882, the company was selling one hundred thousand pounds per month. It also used a mammoth sales force—it claimed twenty-five thousand agents, who had exclusive sales territories around the country. This firm was also brilliant at publicity, forgiving debts in 1927 from those involved with the Vermont flood and handing out free materials with its coffee, including cards, blotters, booklets, and store displays. It also sent holiday greeting cards to every one of its customers and even accepted noncash payments from time to time, cotton being one such commodity bartered in the South.
Coffee was perhaps the ultimate consumer item for which marketing and sales techniques made a big difference—after all, few consumers could tell the difference between high and low quality. In fact, a great deal of coffee on the market was either adulterated or not coffee at all. There were ersatz beans made from rye flour, glucose, and water. Other dubious ingredients included baked horse liver, brick dust, burnt rags, coal ashes, dirt, dog biscuits, mesquite, monkey nuts, sawdust, vetch, and wood chips. During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers could not obtain real coffee and were therefore reduced to using substitutes, including acorns, dandelion roots, sugarcane, parched rice, cotton seed, peanuts, wheat, beans, sweet potatoes, corn, rye, okra, and chicory. (Chicory continued as a legitimate additive and was often advertised openly.) Meanwhile, the Union government was levying a 4-cent duty per pound of coffee while, at the same time, purchasing 40 million pounds of green beans in 1864 alone. The price of coffee almost tripled during the Civil War, although it collapsed by 1865. This feast-and-famine cycle continued for decades as the industry would buy up beans during periods of oversupply in an effort to prop up prices. The most serious such collapse occurred in 1880 after the death of a key coffee baron; as a result, in 1881, the New York Coffee Exchange was founded in order to regulate and stabilize the industry.
Hot chocolate was another popular drink of the day, and when made with cocoa shells, it was often referred to as “little coffee.” The shells, which are the thin outer covering of the beans, cost just 7 to 12 cents per pound in 1896, whereas cocoa cost almost ten times that much. Here in the States, the most common method of making little coffee was to boil a few ounces of roasted shells in three pints of water for half an hour, allow it to settle, strain, and then add cream or boiled milk and sugar. Since cocoa shells have less chocolate flavor than the beans themselves, the key was to extract as much flavor as possible without turning the liquid bitter through overextraction. Other home cooks reduced the roasted shells to a fine paste and then used it much like cocoa, dissolving it in hot water, boiling it for twenty minutes, and adding milk or cream and sugar.
OCTOBER 23, 2009. IT WAS LATE OCTOBER; WE WERE JUST TWO weeks away from the Dinner Party of the Century. A cooking practice session was scheduled for Saturday, October 24, and we ran into a wall of problems starting the previous Monday. We had unexpected puff pastry issues—the butter kept pushing its way out of the rectangle of dough as we rolled it out, even though the air conditioner was on high and we were using the same brands of butter and flour we had used during recipe development. The galangal used for the Canton sorbet was poor quality and provided too little flavor and bite. We tested frozen galangal, which turned the sorbet bitter. We finally increased the amount from 4 to 5 ounces to approximate the original result when galangal was of higher quality.
At the last minute, the supply of Champagne grapes gave out; they were to be used in the Spatlese jelly. After numerous phone calls, Erin found a purveyor in New Market Square who said that he had “a couple” left. After confirming that he meant bunches rather than single grapes, Erin rushed over in the pouring rain only to discover that he had Concord, not Champagne, grapes. We eventually turned to a port jelly, which we cut into small cubes and then layered into a spiral pattern in the Spatlese gelatin.
We also had a long discussion about the tangerine wedges, filled with almond blanc mange and tangerine jelly, for the mandarin cake. Would any of the guests think that the whole thing was edible, rind and all? “No,” I shouted. “Impossible!” A few minutes later, Mike, who was handling the service, popped an entire wedge into his mouth and noted, “The bitterness of the rind complements the sweetness of the jellies!” Well, we would leave this decision to our guests.
Baby artichokes for the fried artichokes course were also a problem—they were just too small. But a few days before the rehearsal dinner, we stumbled upon a good supply of larger specimens. (If the artichokes are too small, the leaves are not big enough to fan out, coat, and fry, so each one has a distinctive crunch.) Geese were also hard to source, since we were cooking before the Thanksgiving holiday, but we did manage to find a high-end supplier (D’Artagnan) who came through at the last minute. Finally, we decided to try three different rums for the punch, a cheap liquor-store variety, a twelve-year-old rum, and then a twenty-year-old rum. The winner, of course, was the older, more expensive brand.
On Friday, we did a dry run grilling the salmon and found that the fire was not hot enough. Someone had added a couple of split logs to the fire just before grilling, thereby insulating the fish from the heat of the coals. We would have to remember to bank the coals, leaving off fresh additions of wood.
By midafternoon on Saturday, things were heating up, literally. The fire alarm, a heat sensor, went off—we had to cover the offending sensor with foil. This resulted in a rather embarrassing visit by the fire department, during which I had to explain that we were attempting to cook a twelve-course dinner on a wood cookstove. They seemed rather confused, as if they had stepped onto the wrong movie set, but after a quick check of the premises, they took off.
In fact, the heat was so terrific in the main kitchen that we had to create a separate staging area for the oysters, the gelatin desserts, and the mandarin cake. It quickly became clear that we needed two full sets of dessert courses: three finished Victorian jellies for display at the table, and two mandarin cakes: one for display, and the other for serving the pastry cream tucked inside the central savoy cake. (Each cake took an entire day to bake and assemble.) In addition, we realized that the sorbet filling in the tangerine halves of the cake would melt quickly while sitting on a sideboard in the dining room; therefore, Yvonne Ruperti, our pastry chef, would have to come up with a fake sorbet, one that was heat-resistant.
We also realized that the rissoles could not be mass-produced, since each one required constant basting in hot oil, limiting the production to a few at a time. Since we would be serving twelve guests, each consuming three rissoles, that was at least a dozen batches. We would have to set up a production line of two, perhaps three Dutch ovens filled with oil, so that we could fry six rissoles at a time. We would also have to find the best way to hold the rissoles so that they would maintain their crispness.
The final test would be the service. With a dozen guests, we would need six servers so that the hot courses could be brought up from the kitchen in just one trip and the plates cleared in the same efficient manner. As the evening progressed, each course was photographed with the proper plate and wineglass, and a rotating scullery system had to be devised so that we could recycle the same plate, bowl, or piece of glassware through multiple courses. As for the cookstove, we used it for roasting the goose and venison, preparing the stocks, and cooking the lobster à l’Américaine (simultaneously, in three separate skillets); the salmon would be grilled directly over the wood fire, and the cooktop would be used to keep sauces and other items warm. The frying would also be done on the wood cookstove, but the mandarin cake would be baked in a conventional oven. Of course the Canton punch would be made in a hand-cranked ice-cream machine, which would take twenty-five to thirty minutes. (I knew this firsthand, since I had been assigned this recipe a half dozen times during the recipe development process.)
TODAY, ALMOST EVERYONE MAKES ELECTRIC DRIP COFFEE AT home. In 1896, there were a variety of methods and, seemingly, no consensus on the best way to brew it. First off, Americans were still boiling their coffee, although in Europe, the two-tier drip pot, a method that was vastly superior to boiling, was in use as far back as the French Revolution. It was improved in 1809 by an American expatriate living in England, Benjamin Thompson, and a partial vacuum system for making coffee was already in use in France and England by 1850. Once again, the United States was lagging behind Europe in the culinary arts. Prepackaged roasted beans were the most common method of purchasing coffee. Most contemporary cookbooks still contained coffee-roasting instructions, since freshly roasted coffee was still considered to provide the tastiest cup.
So, following our test kitchen methodology, we tested all the recipes we could find using an enamel-covered iron pot, which would have been similar to the graniteware of the late Victorian period. For the coffee, we used Starbucks Verona coffee, a medium blend.
How did Fannie do? Well, she won the competition hands down. The coffee was a bit strong but very clear and clean-tasting. To test whether the egg was truly necessary, we made one recipe without it; the resulting coffee tasted stronger, was not as clear, and was slightly bitter.
FANNIE FARMER’S BOILED COFFEE
We did test this recipe without the egg, and it was indeed helpful in making the coffee clearer and less bitter. Fannie even opined on the right time to add sugar and cream to coffee. She claims that it should be put into the cup before the hot coffee for best flavor, although we could not tell any difference.
1 egg
1 cup cold water
1 cup coffee
6 cups boiling water
Whisk egg with one half cup cold water. Add crushed egg shell and stir in the coffee. Transfer mixture to a coffeepot, add the boiling water, and stir thoroughly. Boil for 3 minutes, stuffing the spout with paper towels to prevent aroma from escaping. Remove towel and pour out a small amount of coffee in order to clean spout; return this coffee to the pot. Add half cup of cold water to the pot “to clarify the coffee.” Place pot back on stove on the lowest possible heat level for 10 minutes. Serve at once.
THIS LAST COURSE ALSO INCLUDED CHEESE AND CRACKERS. IN the late 1800s, cheese would have been sold through retail establishments called creameries, which offered a fairly broad selection. Up until midcentury, cheese, like most other foodstuffs, was produced on local farms and not widely distributed. Around the time of the Civil War, however, cheese factories came into vogue; New York was an important producer (124 million pounds annually) and so was Wisconsin. These two states produced two-thirds of the total national output, mostly Cheddar, which was sold in sixty-pound wheels a foot or more in diameter. U.S. producers were also imitating Edam from Holland, creating a less than successful Gruyère in Wisconsin, and a Stilton from Maine that did well in a tasting contest (most Stilton, however, was still imported). Brie was being produced in New York and Pennsylvania, although most customers did not enjoy it “runny,” as well as Limburger (American-made Limburger was more popular than the import, since it was aged less and had a much milder flavor) and Neufchâtel, otherwise known as cream cheese. Parmesan was strictly from Italy, making up roughly one-quarter of total cheese imports, and Camembert was also imported.
In general, Americans had no taste for strong, aged cheeses and therefore American varieties of European imports were aged for only brief periods, the Brie only being aged for two to four weeks, thus producing a cheese quite different from, and much inferior to, the real thing.
Today, of course, American cheese production has come a long way. In fact, unlike in Europe, where a particular type of cheese tends to be produced in a uniform style throughout a region, American cheeses tend to be more individual and eclectic; one producer may do something quite different from another producer in the farm down the road. This doesn’t guarantee better cheese, but it does offer more variety and more serendipitous tastings. Here is the list of cheeses that we served after dinner, based in large part on the sorts of cheeses available in the United States in the late 1800s.
GRUYÈRE VIEUX: Fribourg, Switzerland
Slightly spicy flavor with a few stray crystalline bits. It’s on the sweet side, with a nice bit of earthiness and a finish that is dusky and complex; not overly sharp or rich.
MONTGOMERY FARMHOUSE CHEDDAR: Manor Farm, North Cadbury, Somerset, England
A classic Cheddar with strong overtones of green pepper; even an undercurrent of unripe vegetable.
PARMIGIANO-REGGIANO CRAVERO: Emilia-Romagna, Italy
This Parmesan has a sweetness to it. We could taste an undercurrent of pineapple, and it shows a good balance of salt. Unlike lesser Parmesans, the flavors almost explode in the mouth and the texture is neither too dry nor too soft.
ROQUEFORT GABRIEL COULET: Mayran, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Rich and particularly soft and creamy, not harsh or overpowering, with lots of limestone minerality and nice spice, good salt, and an up-front citrusy quality, an oystery brininess, then a great satiny finish.
FROMAGE DE MEAUX: Meaux, Ile-de-France, France
Very buttery and light, not strong-flavored in any way; must be served at room temperature—any colder and it loses much of its subtle qualities. It has a bit of lactic tang, a hint of olive, and then a slight bitterness at the finish.
TARENTAISE, SPRING BROOK FARM: North Pomfret, Vermont
A bit milder and more buttery than the equivalent French version, this cheese hints at green olives, a slight undercurrent of anchovies, and also mushrooms.
Wine
In the early days of our country, America was not in love with wine, unlike the French and other Europeans. Beer and ale were much more common, and when Americans did drink wines, they were usually fortified wines such as sherry, port, or Madeira. Madeira was the most sought after; it was collected in private cellars, some bottles costing the absurd amount of $40 each, a month’s wages for the average blue-collar worker. This was the state of affairs in the first half of the nineteenth century, but by Fannie Farmer’s time, a great deal of wine was being imported and also grown in this country.
By the 1890s, S. S. Pierce in Boston was selling a wide assortment of wines, purchased either in bottles or in barrels, including selections from the great châteaux of the period, some slightly lower-quality wines, fortified wines, and a few American sparkling and still wines. In 1896, one could purchase the following: champagnes, clarets, sauternes, sherries, hock, sweet wines, Madeira, Tokay, Beaune, Pommard, Beaujolais, Macon, Volnay, and American wines.
Local American wines were also produced with some success in North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, New York, and Missouri, from native grapes such as the Scuppernong, Delaware, and Catawba. Wine from native grapes was generally considered too “foxy” and not of good quality, with few exceptions.
Sparkling wines and champagnes were very popular in the late 1800s, almost always served with oysters and as a palate cleanser between courses. American sparkling wines were available in Fannie’s era, one such producer being the Pleasant Valley Wine Company, located in the Finger Lakes region of New York and founded in 1860. Occasional homegrown attempts were made to produce a local American champagne from ingredients such as cider or “a mixture of turnip juice, brandy, and honey,” which was referred to as “Newark’s champagne.”
Claret was a generic term used to describe red wines from the Bordeaux region. The term claret came from a medieval French practice of short fermentation, which produced pale, rosé-colored wines that were known in export as vinum clarum, vin clar, or clairet. By the late seventeenth century, however, these clarets were much improved, and considerably deeper and richer, and were referred to as New French Clarets.
Sweeter wines, sauternes for example, were preferred over the drier whites of the time—white Bordeaux and Chablis—probably because fortified wines, port and sherry, had been consumed for generations with dinner. The generic term for these sweeter wines was hock, named after the town of Hochheim on the river Main in Germany.
Sherry is a fortified wine, a practice that was begun to protect wines shipped over long distances, where heat and motion would ruin a regular burgundy, for example. The additional alcohol—some sherries were over 20 percent alcohol by volume—killed off remaining yeast cells, thus providing stability during transportation.
Based on our historical research (and many, many happy tastings), here is the final list of wines for the dinner. A complete annotated description of the wines and after-dinner liqueurs may be found at www.fannieslastsupper.com.
THE WINE LIST
OYSTERS: 1990 Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame
MOCK TURTLE SOUP: Lustau Rare Amontillado Escuadrilla Sherry
RISSOLES: 1996 Heimbourg Pinot Gris, Domaine Zind Humbrecht
LOBSTER À L’AMÉRICAINE: 2005 Saint Joseph Blanc Lyseras, Yves Cuilleron
SADDLE OF VENISON: 1986 Château la Mission Haut Brion
WOOD-GRILLED SALMON AND FRIED ARTICHOKES: Reichsrat von Buhl Riesling Spätlese Trocken Pfalz Forster Ungeheuer
ROAST STUFFED GOOSE: 2002 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé, Chambolle-Musigny
MANDARIN CAKE: 1988 Château Guiraud 1er Grand Cru Classé
AFTER-DINNER LIQUEURS
Absinthe Superiéure, Lucid
Bénédictine
Belle de Brillet
Crème de Menthe
Martell XO Supreme (Extra Old)
Trimbach Framboise Grand Reserve
Chartreuse VEP Green