ther substances, and thus often acquires a bad flavour: brown
sugar placed near it will communicate a disagreeable flavour. It is
stated that the coffee in the West Indies has often been injured by
being laid in rooms near the sugar-works, or where rum is distilled; and
the same effect has been produced by bringing over coffee in the same
ships with rum and sugar. Dr. Moseley mentions that a few bags of
pepper, on board a ship from India, spoiled a whole cargo of coffee.

1806. With respect to the quantity of coffee used in making the
decoction, much depends upon the taste of the consumer. The greatest and
most common fault in English coffee is the too small quantity of the
ingredient. Count Rumford says that to make good coffee for drinking
after dinner, a pound of good Mocha coffee, which, when roasted and
ground, weighs only thirteen ounces, serves to make fifty-six full cups,
or a little less than a quarter of an ounce to a coffee-cup of moderate
size.

RECIPES.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

TO MAKE CHOCOLATE.

1807. INGREDIENTS.--Allow 1/2 oz. of chocolate to each person; to every
oz. allow 1/2 pint of water, 1/2 pint of milk.

_Mode_.--Make the milk-and-water hot; scrape the chocolate into it, and
stir the mixture constantly and quickly until the chocolate is
dissolved; bring it to the boiling-point, stir it well, and serve
directly with white sugar. Chocolate prepared with in a mill, as shown
in the engraving, is made by putting in the scraped chocolate, pouring
over it the boiling milk-and-water, and milling it over the fire until
hot and frothy.

_Sufficient_.--Allow 1/2 oz. of cake chocolate to each person.

[Illustration: MILL.]

CHOCOLATE AND COCOA.--Both these preparations are made from the
seeds or beans of the cacao-tree, which grows in the West Indies
and South America. The Spanish, and the proper name, is cacao,
not cocoa, as it is generally spelt. From this mistake, the tree
from which the beverage is procured has been often confounded
with the palm that produces the edible cocoa-nuts, which are the
produce of the cocoa-tree (_Cocos nucifera_), whereas the tree
from which chocolate is procured is very different (the
_Theobroma cacao_). The cocoa-tree was cultivated by the
aboriginal inhabitants of South America, particularly in Mexico,
where, according to Humboldt, it was reared by Montezuma. It was
transplanted thence into other dependencies of