Turkish coffee (Turkish: Türk kahvesi) is a style of coffee prepared in a pot called a cezve using very finely ground coffee beans without filtering. The drink appears under different names across the Middle East, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.
Preparation
Turkish coffee as a beverage is very finely ground coffee brewed in water by bringing just to the boil. Any coffee beans may be used—there are no preferred "Turkish coffee beans". Arabica varieties are considered best, but robusta or a blend is also used. The very fine grind extracts intensely, so that the degree of roast has a big impact; beans are best roasted medium or medium-dark; light and dark roasts do not give best results. The fine grind also means that the coffee grounds will go stale soon after grinding. Article has useful information on selection of beans and roast profile. The coffee grounds remain in the coffee when served. The coffee may be ground at home in a manual grinder made for the very fine grind (electric home grinders are not suitable), ground to order by coffee merchants in most parts of the world, or bought ready-ground—but less fresh—from many shops.
Coffee and water, with added sugar if desired, is brought just to the boil in a special pot called cezve in Turkey, and often called ibrik elsewhere. As soon as the mixture begins to froth it is taken off the heat; sometimes a little of the coffee, with the desired froth, is then distributed among small cups holding about 90ml (traditionally porcelain cups called , 'coffee cup'). The coffee is typically briefly brought to the boil twice more to increase the desired froth, and is then served.
The amount of sugar is specified when ordering the coffee. It may be unsweetened (), with little or moderate sugar (, or ), 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. Much of the finely powdered coffee is in suspension, and goes into the cup when served; some sinks to the bottom and is left, but much remains in suspension and is drunk 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 in the traditional way:
Roasting. Green coffee beans, ideally the best 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 and absorb excess oil in a wooden box. 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 is crucial to the success of Turkish coffee as it affects the foam and mouth feel. According to one source, the particle size should be 75–125 microns. Strict connoisseurs insist that the beans must be hand-pounded in a mortar, although it is difficult to achieve uniform fineness this way. It is more usual to grind them in a traditional brass mill with steel burrs (or a modern hand grinder that can grind fine enough), though it does make for drier particles. Brewing. It is essential to use a proper cezve, a pot traditionally made of thick forged copper, wider at the base than at the neck, with a lip to facilitate pouring, made in various sizes for different numbers of cups. Cold water, several teaspoons of ground coffee (at least 7 grams per cup), and sugar if desired are put in the cezve, and it is heated until it just comes to the boil. The tapering shape of the vessel encourages the formation of foam and retains the volatile aromas. "This stage requires close monitoring and delicate timing since a good Turkish coffee has the thickest possible layer of froth at the top". Some consider that the copper of the cezve improves the taste. Serving. A little coffee with froth is poured, the cezve is returned briefly to the heat to froth up once or twice more, and the rest of the coffee is served, topped with froth. The cup does not affect the of the coffee as such, but connoisseurs say that it makes a difference: the best cups are made of porcelain with a thin rim, which affects mouth-feel. A long cultural tradition emphasises the pleasure of being served coffee in beautiful cups, which are family heirlooms. The coffee is served 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.
While some of these stages may be curtailed in modern coffee drinking, for example the coffee might be purchased already roasted and ground, the rituals and paraphernalia (which e.g. create the anticipatory smell of the roasting beans) do act on the imagination and have a psychological effect.
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 (according to Carl Linnaeus, by deliberately destroying their ability to germinate). From 1538 to 1636 the Ottoman Empire controlled the southern coastal region of what is now 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; a legal document mentions that Ottoman admiral Barbaros Hayreddin Pasha's house had a coffee chamber. It appears that the first coffeehouse in Istanbul was opened in 1554 (some say 1551) by two Arab merchants, Hakem of Aleppo and Shems of Damascus (they may have been separate establishments at first). 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 (, 1789). 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 preparing 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 about the origin of Turkish coffee. Without citing historical sources, some authors have asserted the method originated in the Yemen; or in Damascus (a plausible, if unsubstantiated claim, since the Middle Eastern coffeehouse did probably originate in Damascus and was brought to Istanbul by Syrians, see above). A 1762 Danish expedition recorded that "northern and eastern Arabs" prepared bean coffee "in the same way as with the Turks".
Yemenis may have been the first to drink coffee as a hot beverage instead of chewing the bean, or adding it to solid food, and the earliest social users were probably Sufi mystics in that region who needed to stay awake for their nocturnal vigils.
Observations recorded by Carsten Niebuhr during the Danish expedition to Arabia noted that the bean coffee described as commonly consumed by "northern and eastern Arabs," and prepared "in the same way as with the Turks," was reported to be seldom drunk in Yemen, where it was regarded as excessively stimulating; they much preferred kisher, a beverage made of the coffee shells which more closely resembled a tea; 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 (in rural areas a different method is used and is called Arabic coffee). The drink goes by various other names too, such as Egyptian, Syrian, or Greek coffee, with local variations.
Illegality and acceptance
The English word coffee derives from Turkish , which came from Arabic ,Oxford English Dictionary Online, Coffee, noun, etymology, accessed 4 April 2024. which could mean . It is sometimes stated that coffee was forbidden in Islam, albeit the ban was not very effective. However, it seems that most Muslim religious scholars were not averse to coffee, or actively supported it; but governments 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, and sewn in a bag and thrown into the Bosphorus for a second. These bans were sporadic and often ignored. (Similarly, the government of Charles II of England tried to suppress coffee houses as seditious gatherings—the ban lasted a few days—and, much later, the republican government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk tried to prohibit or discourage coffeehouses in Turkish villages, saying they were places where men gathered to waste their time). Eventually the authorities found it to their advantage to tax rather than suppress the trade. Fifteen years after coffee arrived in Istanbul there were over 600 coffeehouses according to an Armenian historian.
It was not easy to prepare Turkish coffee very well at the time, and prominent Ottoman Turks kept specialist coffee cooks for the purpose. Suleiman the Magnificent had a 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 US$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.
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 Yemeni coffee in Cairo, even being exported back to Mocha itself. The price of coffee fell so much that by the mid-18th century it was accessible to French townspeople of all classes.