The housewife's referee

The discovery of coffee is very curious. It was towards the end of the fifteenth century a poor Arab was travelling through Abyssinia, and finding himself weak and weary from fatigue, he stopped near a grove. Then, being in want of fuel to cook his rice, he cut down a tree which was covered with dead berries. His meal being cooked and eaten, the traveller discovered that he had burned berries that were very fragrant. He collected a number of these, and on crushing them he found the aroma increased ; then, by some accident, he let fall some of the ground substance into his water can, in which was a scanty supply of almost putrid water; but to his astonishment the water was instantly purified. He drank some of it and found it fresh and agreeable, and after drinking it the traveller had so far recovered his strength as to be able to resume his journey. The Arab gathered as many berries as he could, and when he arrived at Aden, in Arabia, he informed the Mufti of his HINTS FOR TEA AND COFFEE MAKING discovery. That divine, who was an inveterate opium smoker, and had been a sufferer for many years from the baneful influence of that poisonous drug, tried an infusion of the toasted berries, and was so delighted at the recovery of his own vigour that he called the tree cahuah (which in Arabic signifies force) out of gratitude. And that is the way in which coffee was discovered. Frozen Coffee. — Take a quart of clarified sugar and boil it in a pint of water till it becomes a syrup ; then pour it over a quarter of a pound of mixed coffee, such as Java and Mocha ; then strain through muslin, and add the whites of two eggs and freeze. Serve with whipped cream. Iced Coffee. — Make a quart of strong coffee (the Distilled essence of coffee is best for it, about a bottleful to a quart of boiling water) ; add three tablespoonfuls of castor sugar and a pint of cream. It should be made eight hours before it is required. Put into a refrigerator for an hour or two, and twenty minutes before serving put in a big lump of ice. Iced Tea and Lemon. — Make tea as usual, and after letting it stand for ten minutes, sugar it slightly and take out the leaves, and let it stand in the refrigerator for eight hours. Serve it in punch bowls, in which slices of lemon and lumps of ice should be put. In ladling it out, each person should receive a piece of lemon and a piece of ice. To make good Chocolate. — Grate up three ounces of the very best chocolate very finely, and put it into a basin; then have a quart of boiling water, and pour on sufficient to cover the grated chocolate. Put a plate over the basin, to preserve the aroma and to aid the melting ; then take a silver spoon, and work it into a very thin, smooth, creamy paste. Next pour on the remainder of the boiling water, which must have been kept boiling on the stove, and let it all boil up once ; then directly remove the pan to a cooler part of the stove, drop in the third of a tin of condensed milk ; stir thoroughly ; return the pan to the fire and let the contents boil up again, and then stand it to simmer for at least twenty minutes. To Roast Coffee. — Picard, in the Strand, sells a capital coffee roaster. The proper quantity of berries is put into THE housewife's REFEREE