Turkish coffee
Turkish coffee is a style of coffee prepared in a cezve using very finely ground coffee beans without filtering or settling to remove the grounds. Similar beverages go under different names in the Middle and Near East and eastern Europe.
Preparation
Turkish coffee is very finely ground coffee brewed by boiling. Any coffee bean may be used; arabica varieties are considered best, but robusta or a blend is also used. The coffee grounds are left in the coffee when served. The coffee may be ground at home in a manual grinder made for the very fine grind, ground to order by coffee merchants in most parts of the world, or bought ready-ground from many shops.Coffee and water, usually with added sugar, is brought to the boil in a special pot called cezve in Turkey, and often called ibrik elsewhere. As soon as the mixture begins to froth, and before it boils over, it is taken off the heat; it may be briefly reheated twice more to increase the desired froth. Sometimes about one-third of the coffee is distributed to individual cups; the remaining amount is returned to the fire and distributed to the cups as soon as it comes to the boil. The coffee is traditionally served in a small porcelain cup called a kahve fincanı 'coffee cup'.
The amount of sugar is specified when ordering the coffee. It may be unsweetened, with little or moderate sugar, or sweet. Coffee is often served with something small and sweet to eat, such as Turkish delight. It is sometimes flavoured with cardamom, mastic, salep, or ambergris.
A lot of the powdered coffee grounds are transferred from the cezve to the cup; in the cup, some settle on the bottom but much remains in suspension and is consumed with the coffee.
According to connoisseurs
In a paper for the 2013 Oxford Food Symposium, Tan and Bursa identified the features of the art or craft of making and serving Turkish coffee, according to the traditional procedures:- Roasting. Ideally the best green Arabica beans are medium-roasted in small quantities over steady heat in a shallow, wrought-iron roasting pan. It is crucial to stop at the right moment, then transfer the beans to the next stage:
- Cooling. The beans are allowed to cool down in a wooden box and absorb excess oil. The kind of wood is claimed to affect the taste, walnut being the best.
- Pounding or grinding. The beans must be reduced into a very fine powder. The fineness of the powder is crucial to the success of Turkish coffee since it affects the foam and mouth feel. Strict connoisseurs insist that they must be hand-pounded in a wooden mortar, although it is difficult to do this while achieving a uniform fineness. Consequently, it has become more usual to grind them in a brass or copper mill, though it does make for drier particles.
- Brewing. It is essential to use a proper cezve. This vessel is a conical flask, being wider at the base than at the neck, and is made of thick forged copper. Cold water, several teaspoons of the ground coffee and any sugar are put in the cezve and it is put on the fire. The tapering shape of the vessel encourages the formation of foam and retains the volatile aromas. The coffee should never be allowed to come to a rolling boil, and must not be over-done. "This stage requires close monitoring and delicate timing since a good Turkish coffee has the thickest possible layer of froth at the top". Some think that the metallic copper helps to improve the taste.
- Serving. The cezve has a spout by which it is poured into the serving cup. While the cup design might not seem to have anything to do with the taste of the beverage, connoisseurs say it makes a difference. The best cups are made of porcelain with a thin rim: it affects mouth feel. A long cultural tradition emphasises the pleasure of being served coffee in beautiful cups, which are family heirlooms. The beverage is served together with a glass of water which should be sipped first to cleanse the mouth. Other cultural traditions affect the guest's appreciation of the beverage and the conviviality of the occasion, including story-telling, fortune-telling, and so forth.
History
Coffee drinking spread in the Islamic world in the 16th century. From the Hijaz it arrived in Cairo; from thence it went to Syria and Istanbul. The coffee tree was first cultivated commercially in the Yemen, having been introduced there from the rainforests of Ethiopia where it grew wild. For a long time Yemenis had a world monopoly on the export of coffee beans. For nearly a century, the Ottoman Empire controlled the southern coastal region of the Yemen, notably its famous coffee port Mocha. In the 18th century Egypt was the richest province of the Ottoman Empire, and the chief commodity it traded was Yemeni coffee. Cairo merchants were responsible for moving it from the Yemen to markets in the Islamic world.Coffee was in use in Istanbul by 1539, for a legal document mentions Ottoman admiral Barbaros Hayreddin Pasha's house had a coffee chamber. It appears that the first coffeehouse in Istanbul was opened in 1554 by Hakem of Aleppo and Șems of Damascus. Soon, coffeehouses spread all over Istanbul and even to small towns in Anatolia.
Ignatius d'Ohsson described for French readers the Turkish method of brewing coffee. His description, translated in this note, closely resembles the present day version, including the production of foam. From the traveller Jean de Thévenot it appears Turks were using it at least a century before that. He mentions that they drank it black; some added cloves, cardamom or sugar, but it was thought to be less healthy, and until recently, an older generation of connoisseurs disdained the habit of sugaring Turkish coffee.
Origin of the Turkish method
There are inconsistent claims as to the origin of Turkish coffee. Without citing historical sources, some authors have asserted the method originated in the Yemen; or in Damascus ; or with the Turkish people themselves.Yemenis may have been the first to consume coffee as a hot beverage and the earliest social users were probably Sufi mystics in that region who needed to stay awake for their nocturnal vigils. However a 1762 Danish scientific expedition noted that Yemenis did not like coffee made the "Turkish" way, and rarely drank it, thinking it bad for the health: they much preferred kisher, a beverage made of the coffee shells which more closely resembled a tea; Likewise, according to the British naturalist John Ellis, French visitors to the Yemeni royal court noticed that only a version was drunk made from coffee husks with a colour like beer. In 1910, the U.S. consul at Aden reported and it has been said that Yemenis do not drink much coffee to this day.
If Turkish coffee is defined as "a very strong black coffee served with the fine grounds in it", then the method is generic in Middle Eastern cities and goes by various other names too, such as Egyptian coffee, Syrian coffee, and so forth, though there may be some local variations.
Illegality and acceptance
The English word coffee derives from Turkish kahve, which came from Arabic qahwah, which could mean. It is sometimes stated that coffee was forbidden in Islam, albeit the ban was not very effective. However, it seems most Muslim religious scholars actually supported coffee, or were not averse to it on principle. It was governments who wanted to suppress coffee gatherings, fearing they were foci of political dissent. "What was condemned was not caffeine's physiological effects but rather the freedom of coffeehouse talk which rulers considered subversive".Already in 1543 several ships were ordered to be sunk in Istanbul harbour for importing coffee. Under Sultan Murad IV those found keeping a coffeehouse were cudgelled for a first offence, sewn in a bag and thrown into the Bosphorus for a second. These bans were sporadic and often ignored.. Eventually the authorities found it to their advantage to tax the trade not suppress it. Fifteen years after coffee arrived in Istanbul there were over 600 coffeehouses, wrote an Armenian historian.
To prepare Turkish coffee very well is not easy, and prominent Ottoman Turks kept specialist coffee cooks for the purpose. Suleiman the Magnificent had a kahvecibasi or chief coffee-cook, and it became a traditional practice for sultans. To demonstrate the civility of their rule, they built magnificent coffeehouses in newly conquered parts of the Ottoman Empire.
International diffusion
Western Europe
From the Ottoman Empire, coffee-drinking spread to western Europe, probably being first introduced into Venice, where it was consumed as a medicine. Early consumers were travellers who imported it for their own use. Other early users were virtuosi: gentleman-scholars curious about the outside world and willing to try exotic products. Since these early adopters were trying to recreate the genuine article, probably they were making proper Turkish coffee, or at least something like it. For example, Jean de Thévenot imported authentic ibriks from the Ottoman Empire.However, most early modern Europeans did not like coffee, which is an acquired taste, and especially they did not like the black, bitter Turkish version. In any case it was too expensive: in France, coffee beans sold for the equivalent of $8,000 a kilo. Coffee did not become a popular beverage until it was altered to appeal to European palates and its price drastically lowered, as follows.
The Yemeni coffee monopoly was broken by the Dutch, who managed to obtain viable coffee plants from Mocha and propagated them to their empire in Java. They were followed by the French, who planted a tree at the Jardin des Plantes de Paris; it has been claimed that "This tree was destined to be the progenitor of most of the coffee of the French colonies, as well as those of South America, Central America, and Mexico", i.e. most of the coffee in the world, though it has been called "a neat story". By the time of the French Revolution, 80% of the world's coffee was grown in the Americas and French coffee was ousting the Yemeni product in Cairo, even being exported back to Mocha itself. The price of coffee fell so much that by mid-18th century it was accessible to French townspeople of all classes.
When coffee was eventually popularised, what was served was not genuine Turkish coffee, but a product heavily diluted with water or milk, and sweetened with sugar. "Combining coffee with fresh milk turned a Turkish drink into a French one". Already in 1689, in a paper for fellow scientists at the Royal Society, London, John Houghton though stressing coffee's Ottoman origins, said very good coffee was made by boiling the grounds in plenty of water and letting them settle, leaving a clear, reddish liquor: which is not Turkish coffee.
Despite this, the "Turkish" connection was strongly promoted, since its exotic connotations helped the new drink to sell. Coffeehouse keepers wore turbans, or called their shops "Turk's Head" and suchlike. Especially in France there was a craze for things Turkish: fashion plates depicted aristocratic ladies taking coffee while dressed as sultanas, attended by servants in Moorish costume. Its medical value was stressed: it became popular in France when doctors advised café au lait was good for the health. In England, the earliest advertisement for a coffee house — owned by Pasqua Rosée, an Armenian from Ragusa — claimed that Turkish people "are not troubled with the Stone, Gout, Dropsie, or Scurvey" and "their skins are exceedingly cleer and white". Despite this, Rosée's product was weak enough to be drunk a half pint at a time on an empty stomach, not an attribute of real Turkish coffee. If there were 'Turkish' coffeehouses in Oxford or Paris, the cited historical sources do not show they were serving coffee made in the Turkish manner.
The real Ottoman influence was on European coffee house culture. "The coffeehouse and café, far from being English and French creations, were at heart an import from Mecca, Cairo, and Constantinople", a topic outside the scope of this article.