[Sca-cooks] Questions on coffee

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 27, 2010, at 1:45 AM, David Friedman wrote:

>> ...
> 
> 
> 
>> * Coffee seems to have been drunk in Persia since the ninth century.
> 
> To the best of my knowledge that is not true.
> 
>> * It was first cultivated around 675 in Arabia.
> 
> Ditto.
> 
>> * Abu ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, was acquainted with coffee
>> around the year 1000.
> 
> I think there is some evidence for references to coffee in the medicinal literature well before it was being used as a drink outside of Abyssinia. This might be one of them.
> 
>> * 1475    The first coffee shop opens in Istanbul (Kiva Han).  It is still
>> open.
> 
> Might be correct.
> 
>> * The first European to mention coffee is Prospero Alpino of Padua.  In 1580
>> he went to Egypt, then under Ottoman rule.
> 
> Might be correct.

And in the end, some of this might be akin, in terms of social impact, to finding that buried Tudor banana peel; are we, as researchers, looking for the "gotcha" experience, neener neener, or a more accurate overall representation of everyday life in our period?

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls, when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter