Training: The History of Coffee

The first historical references to coffee are found in Persia in the year 850AD, but more colourful versions of the discovery of coffee are found even earlier in time. The most "legitimate" story, given the Muslim origins of the product, is the tale of how the Angel Gabriel woke Muhammad from his Drowsiness with a steaming cup of coffee just before an important task. The effect of the drink was so powerful, that it did not only rouse the prophet from his sleepiness, but gave him the strength to unsaddle and defeat 40 men single-handed. There is also a theory that the "roasted grain" which is offered to David, described in the book of Kings, is none other than coffee beans. Some claim that Homer refers to coffee, when citing a beverage called nephentens, which Helen mixed with wine and offers to Telmachus in the fourth canto of the Odyssey.

It is most likely that the history of coffee began in the Caffa region in Ethiopia; where a goat herder noticed a strange restlessness in his flock after they had eaten the berries and leaves of an unknown plant. Monks from a nearby monastery heard of this phenomenon and after various trials, discovered that by roasting, grinding and infusing in water the seeds of this plant, they produced a beverage which helped keep them awake during the long hours of prayer. It is probably thanks to this characteristic that the use of this drink spread amongst monasteries and was taken by the Ethiopian army to the Yemen during various invasions.

The use of coffee spread as far as the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Middle East and it is because of the great number of international pilgrims, who visited these cities and experienced coffee for the first time, that word spread of this drink. It is to the Muslims that we owe the term "qahwah" which means infusion. The Turks then pronounced it "qahve'" which unsurprisingly became caffé, cafe' coffee in European versions.

The discovery of coffee soon spread, with coffee houses opening all over the world. In Vienna it was a Pole who opened the first coffee-house; at the time of a failed invasion by the Turks he invented a new way of drinking coffee, by filtering the sediment, adding a little milk and sweetening it with honey. At the same time, a baker in the city commemorated the eluded danger, by inventing a half-moon shaped pastry, which went perfectly with the drink. It almost seems this was the first cappuccino and croissant; however there was still a long way to go in the evolution of coffee preparation, before a cappuccino that today's coffee drinker would recognise was produced.

 

Originally the coffee plant grew wild in Ethiopia, but once a cultivated variety had been established in Arabia, this monopolised the world population. At the same time, the ever growing number of coffee-houses increased the demand for coffee; this led to some officials of The Dutch Indies Company stealing several plants, which they transferred to their plantations in Ceylon and Java. The French did the same thing and planted some precious cuttings in Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Trinidad. Finally a young Portuguese took some cuttings to Brazil and in less than a century this country was to become the world's largest coffee producer; in 1907 it accounted for 97% of the world harvest.

It was at the beginning of the twentieth century that a machine which prepared coffee fresh for every cup was invented, by an engineer from Milan named Luigi Bezzera; it was called an espresso machine because the product was prepared only on the customer's 'express' request. In 1948, Achille Gaggia invented the first piston driven machine, which was advantageous because it used hot water under pressure, rather than steam to extract the flavour; yielding a more concentrated and aromatic liquid, with a compact crema. The popularity of the new process, led La Pavoni to introduce the first electric coffee machine, named 'Europiccola'.