[Sca-cooks] Coffee was Beverage experiments

[Terry Decker]

That's an error and it may even be one I introduced.  There is some evidence 
that coffee was imported into Venice in the late 16th Century by 
Gianfrancesco Morosini, a Venetian who was the city magistrate at 
Constantinople, known to have encountered coffee around 1585.  Another 
possible importer is a spice trader named Mocengio.  In either case, the 
coffee was for personal use rather than as a commercial venture.  There is a 
letter documenting the non-commercial importation of coffee into Venice in 
1615 and the first coffee house known to exist in Venice was opened in 1645.

Nope, the error was not mine, it was some other gentle quoting Harold McGee. 
McGee's bibliography in On Food and Cooking references the Schapira's The 
Book of Coffee and Tea, which is not the most accurate source.  If you 
scroll down to Bear's Timeline for Coffee, that's a little more accurate, 
although I've found other things to improve it since it was first written.

The two best works on the subject of coffee are:

Hattox, Ralph S., Coffee and Coffee Houses:  The Origins of a Social 
Beverage in the Medieval Near East; Seattle, University of Washington, 1985.

Ukers, William H., All About Coffee, 2nd Edition; New York, The Tea and 
Coffee Trade Journal Company, 1935.

A version of Ukers can be found on Google Books, but it is a little 
difficult to find things.

Bear


From: "otsisto" <otsisto at socket.net>


> In the Floreigium (sp?) it says that coffee was introduce to Venice in the
> 1400s.