A general educating of the sense of smell may not solve the temperance
problem, but it will be a great help.
It would be a blessing if every liquor saloon in the country could be
closed. Most of the whiskey and other strong drink sold--at an enormous
profit--in these places is adulterated in ways which often make it
infinitely more harmful than the pure article would be, under any
circumstances. But the unadulterated is an evil, too, because it is
usually drunk in excess.
It has been said of the native African that he wants something with a
"bite" in it and is not satisfied with a drink that does not go down
his throat "like a torchlight procession." But the African is not
alone in this peculiarity. There are many thousands of whites who want
their whiskey or rum "fiery" above all things; and they want it that
way because their sense of smell is not educated to appreciate the
higher qualities of liquors--their fragrance, or "bouquet."
"It is a fact," as a well-known mixer of fancy drinks once remarked,
"that there are very few good judges of liquor. It is a very old
chestnut to set out whiskey when brandy has been called for, and not
one in ten can tell the difference. There are few people who can
distinguish between high and low priced wines."
The difference between the best wines and the poorest lies chiefly
in this, that the best have a maximum of bouquet and a minimum of
alcohol. The bouquet is exhilarating, like the alcohol, yet is
perfectly harmless. On the bouquet depends the commercial as well as
the gastronomic value of wines almost entirely. Now, while some persons
who are addicted to strong drink may be hopeless cases, there are
thousands who might be saved by teaching them that by educating their
sense of smell to the appreciation of bouquet they can get infinitely
more pleasure from a refined sort of indulgence than from the bestial
alcoholic intoxication which is followed by nausea, headache, by nights
and days of misery, by poverty and deadly diseases.
Drunkenness and gluttony are no longer respectable, or even
semi-respectable, and further progress in the same direction may be
hoped for through efforts at reform along the lines I have indicated.
A true epicure would no more dull the edge of his appetite for future
pleasures of the table by over-indulgence in food or drink than a
barber would think of whittling kindling wood with his razor.
Whiskey drinkers are far from being the only topers. There are also
a great many tea and coffee topers. A writer in the "Journal of the
American Medical Association" describes the case of a woman, a member
of the Temperance Union in her town, who was "a coffee drunkard,"
having been living for months on little beside black coffee, till she
was a wreck. Such cases are common; they have led to the manufacture on
a large scale of diverse substitutes for coffee, some of which are not
at all bad if taken with sugar and cream.
Some relief is also coming through the increased demand for cocoa,
which has the advantage over tea and coffee of being a real food. In
the period from 1888 to 1911 imports of cocoa into the United States
increased from 6,600,000 pounds to 134,000,000, while those of coffee
increased only from 404,000,000 to 800,000,000 pounds, and those of tea
from 68,000,000 to 104,000,000 pounds.
That tea is the worst enemy of the Irish peasantry was the burden of a
blue book issued a few years ago by the Inspectors of Irish schools.
"The tea is so prepared for use that the liquid, when drunk, has the
properties of a slow poison. The teapot stewing on the hearth all day
long is kept literally on tap; the members of the family, young as well
as old, resorting to it at discretion."
[Illustration: Javanese Tea-picker and Porter]
It is not only among the peasantry and the city slums that improperly
made tea does its deadly work. Among the well-to-do, in all countries,
it is far from being in all cases, as it is supposed to be, "the
cup which cheers but not inebriates." The strong coffee-colored
four-o'clock tea served in English and American homes is a gastronomic
atrocity; it is bad for heart, nerves, and stomach. In the United
States, in nine cases out of ten, the tea served is an inky fluid,
bitter as gall, and devoid of fragrance.
When our Government forbade the importation of artificially colored
teas, Consul West wrote from Japan that the planters were induced by
this measure to "make greater efforts in future to _improve the flavor_
rather than the color and the appearance" of the tea.
The Flavor is, indeed, the one thing to be considered in raising
high-class tea; also, in preparing it. The art of brewing a good cup
of tea consists in making it in such a way as to secure a maximum of
fragrance and a minimum of the tannin, which is bad for the digestion,
and the theine, which is a nerve poison. The rules for making tea may
be found in any good cook book. The main points are that the water
should never remain on the leaves more than from three to five minutes,
and that the teapot should be thoroughly heated because it is only at
the boiling point that some of the volatile properties of the leaves,
on which the aroma depends, can be properly extracted. A little sugar
to sweeten it is permissible; it does not alter the flavor. Milk or
cream do; wherefore tea-drinkers who are epicures and like to enjoy the
unique fragrance of different kinds of tea, reject them.
The commercial and gastronomic value of coffee is determined by the
amount of the aromatic volatile oil which develops in the process
of roasting. This fragrant oil is called caffeone. But coffee also
has another active principle, an alkaloid called caffeine, which has
a strong effect on the vascular and nervous systems and is used as a
medicine. Now, the art of making good coffee consists in eliminating,
as far as possible, the effects of the caffeine while developing those
of the caffeone. To the caffeine are due the wakefulness and digestive
disturbances caused by coffee; while the flavorsome caffeone produces
the harmless exhilarating effects.
Coffee-roasting is a science which every housewife should study and
practise; its neglect accounts for the fact that one so seldom gets a
fragrant cup of coffee. The grinding should be done just before the
coffee is prepared, and it should be drunk at once. Families having
plenty of storage room should buy coffee by wholesale as it improves
with age and yields a more mellow beverage. Dealers do not favor this
storing because the beans lose weight thereby. Wash the beans before
roasting them, and you will have the material for brewing a good cup of
coffee.
An effort is being made in Europe to substitute for coffee and tea
a beverage which, while having their refreshing effect, contains so
small a proportion of the alkaloid substance as to be comparatively
harmless, namely maté. In Argentina the use of the maté leaf has
increased enormously in recent years, the annual consumption averaging
nearly twenty pounds per person, and in Paraguay it is even as high
as twenty-nine pounds per inhabitant. North Americans and Europeans
have taken to it much more slowly, owing, it is said, to the crude way
of preparing the leaves--the drying of them over an open fire, which
gives them a smoky flavor. But it is claimed that superior methods of
preparation will make maté a powerful rival of coffee and tea, all the
more as it is much cheaper. A pound of it makes five times as many cups
as a pound of coffee; and, unlike tea leaves, the maté leaves can be
used for a second infusion without impairment of the quality.
In beverages, as in foods, Flavor is the decisive factor. The natural
flavor of maté seems to be as agreeable as that of tea or coffee, but
it is apt to be marred by the suggestion of smoke just referred to. If
this can be eliminated, and if it is true that maté, though containing
less caffeine than either tea or coffee, is even more stimulating and
sustaining, then "Paraguay tea" seems destined to be the domestic
beverage of the future.