SC - Medieval Coffee

[Michael F. Gunter]

>
> From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
> To: "'sca-cooks at ansteorra.org'" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
> Subject: RE: SC - Medieval Coffee
> Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 16:52:55 -0500
> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)
>
> If that is Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses:  the Origins of a Social
> Beverage in the Medieval Near East, the source is one of the two best.  The
> other is Ukers, All About Coffee, which was last published around 1933 or
> 1934.  Hattox is a scholarly study of the spread of coffee in the Middle
> East.  Ukers is a massive, broad spectrum work on coffee for the coffee
> trade.  It covers history, art, consumption, production, utensils, etc.,
> etc., etc.
>
> While it can be demonstrated that the coffee bean was known to the Persian
> physicians, Rhazes (900) and Avicenna (1000), they do not appear to have
> used it as a beverage.  The documented general use of coffee as a beverage
> begins around 1450 in southern Arabia and spreads northward over the next
> 100 years.  There was probably some European use of coffee in Italy in the
> later half of the 16th Century, but the evidence is sketchy.
>
> If you want to check on our previous discussions of coffee, try:
>
> http://www.florilegium.org/files/BEVERAGES/coffee-msg.html
>
> There is also an decent article on coffee in the October 1998 (IIRC) issue
> of Serve It Forth!  I don't recommend the coffee article which appeared in
> TI about a year ago.
>
> I don't recall seeing a period reference to using salt in coffee, but I
> haven't seen much more than excerpts from many of the period and near period
> references.
>
> Bear
>
> > Whilst stumbling around Amazon.com the other day, I came
> > across a book
> > entitled 'Coffee and Cofeehouses" which, according to the
> > blurb and editorial
> > reviews, traces the history of coffee consumption in the Near
> > Middle East in
> > medieval times.  I was wondering if anyone on the list
> > (Cariadoc, Suleman??)
> > has had a chance to look at this book, and can tell me if it
> > is worth picking
> > up.
> >
> > Balthazar of Blackmoor
> > (a roving ambassador of The Coffee Generation)
> >