SC - Coffee in period

[Decker, Terry D.]

> So what was period coffee like?  Specifically, what was being drunk in
> Italy, and when did that start?  I'm curious, since I have an Italian
> Renaissance persona.
> 
> -Sofonisba
> 
Coffee in Italy came from the trade between Venice and the Turks, so it was
probably prepared in the Turkish style with a tablespoon of powdered coffee
beans and spiced with cardamon, cinnamon or nutmeg.  Sugar in coffee appears
in the early 17th Century in Istanbul.  It would have been prepared in an
ibrik.  I know of no description of how coffee was prepared in Italy at this
time, and most of what we know about how coffee was prepared in the Arab
world comes from slightly later sources.

Since I don't have my notes handy, I'm working from memory, which may be
faulty.  The first coffee to enter Italy was brought in by an
ambassador/trade negotiator to Constantinople.  This was about 1550.  He
apparently enjoyed the beverage and served it as an after dinner curiosity.
It apparently caught on with the wealthy Italians and spread across Northern
Italy, so that the drink was known before the first known Italian coffee
shop opened in the latter half of the 17th Century.

IIRC, commercial importation began in the last quarter of the 16th Century.
Among my notes, I have the names of a couple people who were very likely the
first coffee importers.  The trade appears to have been limited to Northern
Italy, probably because Venice and Genoa controlled much of the trade into
the Ottoman Empire.  

When I find my notes, I'll cheerful send you a copy.  Until then, let me
recommend Ralph Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: the Origins of a Social
Beverage in the Medieval Near East and William Ukers, All About Coffee.
These are the two most scholarly works on coffee of which I know.  

Hattox thoroughly covers the Islamic origin and spread of coffee.  The book
was available as a trade paperback from one of the university presses.

Ukers is more difficult to find, having been originally printed in the early
1920's with a second edition in the earlie 1930's.  Ukers book was an
attempt to encompass "everything" known about coffee for the tea and coffee
industry.  He also wrote a companion set of volumes on tea.

There are a number of sources which place the original entry of coffee into
Europe at Vienna in 1529.  This is an error.  Coffee was new in Istanbul and
I doubt that any great quantity of coffee made it to the First Siege of
Vienna.  The coffee was lost at the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683.  Zum
Roten Kreuz, the first coffeehouse in Vienna opened in the same year,
supplied by coffee salvaged from the Ottoman baggage.

Bear

  
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