The Arabians, when they take their coffee off the fire, immediately
wrap the vessel in a wet cloth which fines the liquor instantly,
makes it cream at the top and occasion a more pungent steam, which
they take great pleasure in snuffing up as the coffee is pouring
into the cups. They, like all other nations of the East, drink
their coffee without sugar.

Some of the Orientals afterward modified the early coffee-making
procedure by pouring the boiling water on the powdered coffee in the
serving cups. They thus obtained "a foaming and perfumed beverage," says
Jardin, "to which we (the French) could not accustom ourselves because
of the powder which remains in suspension. Nevertheless, clarified
coffee may be obtained in the Orient. In Mecca, in order to filter it,
they strain it through stopples of dried herbs, put into the opening of
a jar."

Sugar seems to have been introduced into coffee in Cairo about 1625.
Veslingius records that the coffee drinkers in Cairo's three thousand
coffee houses "did begin to put sugar in their coffee to correct the
bitterness of it", and that "others made sugar plums of the coffee
berries". This coffee confection later appeared in Paris, and about the
same time (1700) at Montpellier was introduced a coffee water, "a sort
of rosa-folis of an agreeable scent that has somewhat of the smell of
coffee roasted." These novelties, however, were designed to please only
"the most nice lovers of coffee"; for _ennui_ and boredom demanded new
sensations then as now.

Boiling continued the favorite method of preparing the beverage until
well into the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, we learn from English
references that it was the custom to buy the beans of apothecaries, to
dry them in an oven, or to roast them in an old pudding dish or frying
pan before pounding them to a powder with mortar and pestle, to force
the powder through a lawn sieve, and then to boil it with spring water
for a quarter of an hour. The following recipe from a rare book
published in London, 1662, details the manner of making coffee in the
seventeenth century:

COFFEE MAKING IN 1662

To make the drink that is now much used called coffee.

The coffee-berries are to be bought at any Druggist, about three
shillings the pound; take what quantity you please, and over a
charcoal fire, in an old pudding-pan or frying-pan, keep them
always stirring until they be quite blac