Flat whites or long blacks? What our changing coffee tastes say about us
From a 13th-century Yemen brew to the latest full-on blast of beans, the quest for the perfect caffeine hit continues
When a man called Jacob opened what’s thought to be the first British coffee house in Oxford in 1650, he cannot possibly have known what he was starting. Then, as now, coffee was fashionable. In France, which had beaten Britain in the race to bring the drink to western Europe, people were dazzled by the Turkish ambassador’s parties, at which he once served Isaac D’Israeli, father of Benjamin, “the choicest Mocha coffee in tiny cups of egg-shell porcelain”. Perhaps Jacob hoped this glamour would rub off on the Angel Coaching Inn (admission: one penny).
But coffee was then still a quite basic thing: fragrant, maybe, but incredibly bitter. It was a matter of one size fits all (and absolutely no caramel syrup). The only faux pas a person could commit in its vicinity was to grimace too vigorously on tasting it, a gaucherie grand ladies were able quickly to conceal with the careful deployment of their fans.
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