Memory Monday: Coffee in Our Family Part 2

my great-grandfather's brother and sister-in-law

COFFEE IN OUR FAMILY—Part 2

Last week I wrote about how we drink coffee in my family. This week I want to share some interesting tidbits about making coffee. Recently as I was researching for my historical magazine—Worbly’s Family Monthly Magazine—I came across ways to make coffee without coffee beans. My great-grandfather and his brother would still have been at home when the following book came out. Here the hints for the homemaker from The Ready Adviser and Family Guide by Isaac Shinn, published in 1866:

Acorn Coffee (a pleasant beverage).—Take sound, ripe acorns, peel off the hull or husk, divide the kernels, dry them gradually, and then roast them in a close vessel. When roasted, add a little butter in small pieces, while hot, in the roaster. Grind like other coffee, and to each teacup­ful add a tablespoonful of common coffee. To be made and drank as common coffee.

A Substitute for Coffee.—Boil clean white rye until the grains swell; then drain and dry it. Roast it to a dark brown, and prepare as other coffee, allowing twice the time for boiling. This alone makes good coffee, but if you add a little of the extract of coffee, or some beets or carrots sliced thin and dried in an oven till brown, it will make a coffee but little, if any, inferior to the genuine article.

Another.—Roast Indian meal in a bread-pan to a very dark brown; then mix it with molasses to a thick batter, and put it in a pan, and bake slowly until it becomes dry. It can be stirred often, so as to make it crummy, or baked in a cake, and a piece ground, or pounded fine, when wanted for use. This is said to make good coffee.

Last week, I said that I love cream/half & half. Well, 150 years ago, the people also needed something to lightened that black beverage. But what to do if there was no cream handy? Here is the solution they had for that problem:

A Substitute for Cream.—Cream, when unattainable, may be imitated thus: Beat the white of an egg to froth, put in a small lump of butter, and mix well; then turn the coffee to it gradually, so that it may not curdle. If perfectly done it will be an excellent substitute for cream. For tea, omit the butter, using only the egg. This might be of great use at sea, as eggs can be preserved fresh in various ways.

I am so thankful we have several grocery stores nearby so I can get my canisters of Folger’s Black Silk ground coffee, my cream, and flavored syrups. Think I’ll go make a large glass of iced English toffee coffee.