Coffee in United States in twentieth century

The large volume of coffee imports into the United States played an important role in expanding US-Latin American trade in the twentieth century. World War II increased US domination of the Latin American coffee trade by cutting off the important German market.

Historically, coffee was a low cost mass market beverage. This began to change in the 1960s when coffee stores began selling premium coffee beans as well as roasters and other related equipment.

One such retail store was Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Berkeley California. It was founded in 1966 by Alfred Peet, who sold coffee beans and equipment to many students from the nearby University of California.

They inspiring a new generation of small grassroots, batch roasters (as opposed to mass continuous roasting) and sparking the modern ‘specialty coffee’ movement exemplified by Starbucks Coffee founded in 1971 in Seattle.

Customers can purchase fresh roasted beans from a local coffee roster or buy coffee in one-way valve bags, which allow beans to de-gas without admitting oxygen.

Coffee consumption increased steadily between 1925 and 1945. Entering the 1960s, coffee was the most popular beverage consumed in the United States.

But coffee consumption fell by 26% between 1965 and 1987, a trend that continued through the late 1990s, when per capita consumption of both sweetened soft drinks and alcoholic beverages surpassed coffee.

As of 2010, 29 percent of Americans got their coffee at home, 25 percent at Starbucks, 16 percent at MacDonald’s, 11 percent at Dunkin’ Donuts, and 19 percent elsewhere (which includes everything from white tablecloth restaurants to gas stations).
Coffee in United States in twentieth century

History of Coffee: Spreading of Coffee Consumption to England and France

History of Coffee: Spreading of Coffee Consumption to England and France
Around 1580 a physician and renowned botanist Prosper Alpin, who was director of a botanical garden of European plants in Padua (Italy) spent four years in Egypt where he accompanied the Consul of the Republic of Venice.

He studied Egyptian flora and described the coffee tree in his work Plants of Egypt published in Venice in 1592.

He noted that the coffee tree produces a fruit called bon or ban and “that Arabs and Egyptians use it to make a kind of infusion that is popular and that they drink in place of wine. This beverage is called caoua.”

In 1615, Venetian merchants who had come to appreciate the qualities of coffee in Istanbul imported from Mocha into Europe.

In 1660, the first shipment of coffee coming from Alexandria arrived in Marseille and the first coffeehouse there was opened in 1670.

For a short time, Marseille supplied the coffee for all of Europe.

The first coffeehouses were opened in Oxford, England in 1650, in London on 1652, and in Hamburg, Germany in 1677.

However, in 1643 there was already a tavern where coffee was consumed in North America, in the city of New Amsterdam at the site of the present Broadway of New York City.

This café was probably the most famous one in New York, the City Tavern which is presently the Fraunces Tavern.

Many coffeehouses were set up in North America during the 18th century.

In France, the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire, Soliman Aga, who arrived in Paris in 1669, offered coffee to all his guest and thus introduced it to the court and to the French High Society.

In Paris at the Saint-Germain Fair of 1672, an Armenian named Pascal opened the first public café which was called House of Caova that he later transferred to the quai du Lourve.

In 1689, an Italian named Procopio opened a deluxe café which is presently the Procope restaurant in the VIth district of Paris, 13 rue de l’Ancienne-Comedie.

Coffee consumption became widespread at Court during the reign of Louis the XVth. In order to please Madame Du Barry the King was said to have spent fifteen thousand pounds per year “for the good pleasure if these ladies”.

It is at this this time that coffee became popular throughout France.
History of Coffee: Spreading of Coffee Consumption to England and France

Milk Trends in Western Europe

Milk Trends in Western Europe
The rise of milk as a milk in North-West Europe started in the nineteenth century, and is closely associated with industrial revolution. The diffusion of milk as a drink should be considered as part of a wider process of developing safe and healthy beverages for mass consumption, the spas or mineral waters, fruit juices and later the soft drinks.

Western Europe can be rightly classified as a region of lactophiles. There was a clear distinction had to be made between milk and non-milk using regions of the world, because of differences in the role of cattle in the food systems. The traditional non-milk using populations are to be found in humid tropical Africa, South East Asia but also in the Far East. In Western Europe the highest milk consumption is to be found in the Scandinavian countries and Ireland.

The Dutch consider themselves as typical drinkers. As a nation with traditions their level of milk consumption is not strikingly high compared with other countries. Italy is the only country of Western Europe where milk consumption is limited. In Italian food culture, milk is regarded mainly as a food and not as a drink. Its use strictly associated with breakfast and especially for infants. The appreciation of milk is very diffuse. Even in populations with a deficiency of the enzyme lactase to make digestion of the milk sugar lactose possible, people generally can drink modest quantities of milk.

In the Low Countries, with their relatively extensive livestock of cattle, pure milk in the unpreserved form was not a popular ingredient in the medieval kitchen of the gentry. Basically three kinds of milk were used: milk as such, skim milk (from which most of the fat has been removed) and buttermilk slight fermented low-fat content milk), which is a byproduct of butter making. Milk and buttermilk were used as ingredient for cereal porridges. In the rural areas of the Netherland, in the period 1900-1925, byproducts such as buttermilk and skim milk were still important ingredients in porridges.

Buttermilk was, however also appreciated as a drink in the eighteenth century in the countryside. Whey a liquid by product of cheesemaking was sometimes used as a drink. Small farmers and rural laborers kept some goats for milk supply. The goat was often called the cow of the poor. In the middle of the nineteenth century, before the industrial revolution in the Netherlands, milk was rarely taste by the working class households in the cities, a phenomenon which could be found in other cities of Western Europe.

In the nineteenth century the supply of fresh milk to the expanding town and large urban settlements posed many difficulties. Milk of good qualities was expensive and out of reach of the working classes.

In England, at that home the main industrialized nation of Europe not only fresh milk but likewise condensed milk was importance for urban consumer. As a relatively cheap milk product its consumption rapidly increased. It was, to a large extent used for feeding infants and young children. In Netherlands milk supplied to the cities was fresh milk and condensed milk played hardly any role. As in other European countries fresh milk was supplied directly from the dairy farm to the consumer in the cities, either by the farmer or by milk traders. The milk with her yoke bucket, selling milk at the doorstep was a common sight in many Dutch towns until of the nineteenth century.

This system was, however, inadequate: milk was often polluted or diluted with water. From the 1870s onward three factors have played crucial role in the diffusion of the concepts of milk as a diet, namely medical advice from hygienists, home economics trainings for girls, and group of progressive entrepreneurs within the dairy industry.
Milk Trends in Western Europe

History of Apple Cider

History of Apple Cider
There are two types of apple cider; sweet cider and hard cider. Sweet cider is simply the unfiltered juice of pressed apples. Hard cider is the fermented, unfiltered juice of pressed apples. There was a long history of apple cider.

During ancient times, Hebrews drank and called the drink “Shekar” and the Greeks drink “Sikera”. Both obtained by cooking apples with fermented juice. Before the Christian era, the various peoples of Europe had succeeded in producing beverage more or less similar to cider from a variety of fruit.

When the Romans arrived in England in 55 BC, they were reported to have found the local villagers drinking a delicious cider-like beverage made from apples.

By beginning of the ninth century, cider drinking was well established in Europe and a reference made by Charlemagne clearly confirms its popularity.

After the Norman conquest on 1066, cider consumption became widespread in England and orchards were established specifically to produce cider apples. In the 15th century, real progress was made in its presentation. Cider is a way of life.

In 1588, Julien LE PAULMIER, a Norman, publishes a treatise called “De Vino et pomaco”. It contributed to make cider better known and give it the place it deserves as a healthy drink, and praised its medicinal properties. The consumption of cider grew and grew but was then halted several times by permanent state of war.

During colonial era, hard apple cider was by far the most popular alcoholic beverage in America far more than whiskey, wine or beer. Hard cider became the traditional drink of New England not long after the first settlers arrived.

Apple cider continued in its popularity into the 1800s due in part to the efforts of the legendary Johnny Appleseed who planted many apple trees in the Midwest. As a result, apple cider brewing spread into that area of the country.
History of Apple Cider