Volume 13 , Issue 5

Home Comfort Range (1934) - Making Coffee

See if this following article in the 1934 Home Comfort Range Cookbook sounds familiar to how your grandparents or parents made coffee back in the 1930's. Did they have some special traditions for boiling or filtering their coffee back? We would love to hear of them.

Coffee -- In general use, there were two methods of making good coffee: direct boiling and filtering or percolating. With either method, the use of pure and strictly fresh water was absolutely necessary for best results, and no water should have been used that had once been boiled and cooled.

Boiled Coffee -- (4 cups) Beat half an egg white with 3 tablespoons cold water, add 3/4 cup ground coffee, and stir until coffee is well moistened; put into scalded coffee-pot and add 1 quart fresh water that has just been brought to a boil; boil vigorously for five minutes, add 1/4 cup cold water, and set aside for three minutes to settle; serve.

Many noted cooks boiled the coffee in an open pan or kettle, and passed it through a strainer into the serving pot, enabling them to omit the egg, and yet serve good, clear coffee.

Filtered Coffee -- In this method, very finely ground or pulverized coffee is suspended in a strainer in the top of the coffee-pot, and the boiling water filtered through it. This method is the principle on which the large coffee urns used in restaurants and large kitchens are made, and is the one recommended by the National Association of Coffee Roasters as the blest, even for the household.

Prepare the filter by placing over an open china tea-pot or ordinary coffee-pot, a clean, wet, old linen napkin, or a new square of medium weight unbleached muslin, letting it sag at the center, forming a bag -- the cloth may be sewed to a strong wire ring made to fit the top of the pot.

(4 cups) Have fresh water boiling vigorously; put 4 heaping tablespoons finely pulverized coffee into the wet bag adjusted to pot; pour the boiling water over the coffee slowly enough to allow it to go through until slightly more than 4 cups are used; remove bag; serve.

never permit the bag to get dry; wash it out immediately and keep it in a jar of cold water, which should be changed every day; every effort should be made to keep the bag sweet and clean, as the least souring ruins the coffee -- this is most important.

This method is far superior to direct boiling,e specially for the cheaper grades of coffee.

Coffeepots made on this principle could have been had on the market back in the 1930's. Another pot made back then made on the same principle, but which requires less manipulation, but a longer time in which to make the coffee, is a patented article called a "Percolator."

A combination of the two methods is employed by placing finely pulverized coffee in a cloth bag with a string attached, and suspending it in water boiling in the coffee-pot; remove bag; serve.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---