The Physiology of Taste (23 page)

It is beyond doubt that coffee greatly excites the cerebral powers; also any man who drinks it for the first time is bound to be kept from a good share of his natural sleep.

Sometimes this effect is softened or modified by habit; but there are many people in whom this excitation always occurs, and who because of it are forced to give up drinking coffee at all.

I have said that this effect can be modified by habit, which in itself does not keep it from appearing in another form, since I have observed that people who are not made insomniac by it at night have an especial need to drink it during the day in order to stay awake, and often fall asleep after dinners at which they have not drunk it. There are also those who are drowsy all day if they have not had their morning cup of it.

Voltaire and Buffon drank a great deal of coffee; perhaps the former owed to this habit the admirable clarity which one senses in his works, and the latter the enthusiastic harmony which is found in his literary style. It is plain enough that many pages of
ESSAYS ON MAN
, about the
dog
, the
tiger
, the
lion
, and the
horse
, were written in a state of extraordinary cerebral exaltation.

Insomnia caused by coffee is not painful; a sufferer from it is very clear-thinking and has no wish to go to sleep: that is all. He is not nervous and unhappy as he would be if insomniac from any other cause, all of which does not mean that this form of tempestuous excitation cannot be extremely harmful if it lasts too long.

Long ago it was only the fairly old people who drank coffee; now everyone takes it, and perhaps that is the spiritual lash that drives such a mob up all the roads toward Olympus, and toward the temple of Memory.

The shoemaker who wrote the tragedy
THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA
, which all Paris listened to a few years ago, drank a great deal of coffee: in this at least he rose higher than the
joiner of Nevers
, who was only a drunkard.
²²

Coffee is a much more powerful stimulant than is believed. A strong man can live a long time and still drink two bottles of wine every day. The same man could not long support a like quantity of coffee; he would become imbecilic, or would die of consumption.

I once saw in London, in Leicester Square, a man whom the immoderate use of coffee had reduced to a wretch (
CRIPPLE
); he no longer suffered, was used to his condition, and had cut himself down to five or six cups a day.

It is a sacred duty for all the fathers and mothers of the world to forbid coffee to their children with great severity, if they do not wish to produce dried-up little monsters, stunted and old before they are twenty. This warning is above all applicable to the parents of Paris, whose children are not always as strong and healthy as if they had been born in certain country districts, such as the Ain for instance.

I am among those who must shun coffee, and I shall end this essay by telling
how
I was one day roughly subjected to its power.

The Duke of Massa, at that time Minister of Justice, had asked me for a piece of work which I wished to edit carefully, and for which he had left me very little time: he wished it the next day.

I resigned myself to spending the night on it; and to protect myself from the desire to sleep, I fortified my dinner with two large cups of coffee, as strong as they were odorous.

I went to my rooms at seven o’clock to pick up the papers which had been announced as on their way to me; but I found only a letter which informed me that because of some sort of bureaucratic protocol I should not receive them until the following morning.

Thoroughly disappointed in every sense of the word, I went back to the house where I had dined, and took a hand at the card game without feeling any of that absent-mindedness which usually bothers me.

I could lay this to the coffee; but, even while paying homage to this reaction, I was not without some worry as to how I should pass the night.

Nevertheless I went to bed at my usual hour, thinking that even if I did not sleep tranquilly, at least I should drowse for four or five hours and thus ease myself gently into the next day’s activities.

I was mistaken: two hours after I went to bed I was more awake than ever; I was in a state of extremely active mental excitement, and my brain felt like a mill grinding madly, with nothing to grind upon.

I suspected that I should profit by this activity, or otherwise sleep would never come; and I occupied myself by putting into verse form a little story which I had read lately in an English book.

I finished it with ease; and since I still felt neither more nor less sleepy, I tried a second poem, but it was useless. A dozen couplets had exhausted my poetic verve, and I had to give up.

I spent the night, then, without sleep and without feeling drowsy for a single instant; I got up and spent the whole day in the same state, without either meals or occupations bringing about a change in it. Finally, when I once more went to bed at
my usual hour, I figured that for the past forty I had not closed my eyes.

47: The men who first assaulted the frontiers of America were driven there by the hunger for gold. At that time, almost all the known values were in terms of minerals; agriculture and commerce were in their infancy, and political economy had not yet been born. The Spaniards, therefore, hunted in the New World for precious metals, since found to be almost sterile in that they depreciate as they multiply, and in that we have discovered many other more active means of adding to the main body of wealth.

But those far countries, where sunshine of every degree makes the fields burst with richness, were found perfect for the cultivation of sugar and coffee; they also hid, it was disclosed, the first potatoes, indigo plants, vanilla, quinine, cocoa, and so forth; and it is these which were the true treasures.

If these discoveries have taken place in spite of the barriers erected by a suspicious nation, it is reasonable to hope they will be multiplied in the years to come, and that the researches carried on by the scholars of old Europe will enrich the Three Powers with a multitude of substances which will give us entirely new sensations, just as vanilla has already done, or which will add to our alimentary resources, like cocoa.

We have come to think of
chocolate
as the mixture which results from roasting together the cacao bean with sugar and cinnamon: such is the classic definition. Sugar is an integral part of it; for with cacao alone we can only make a cocoa paste and not chocolate. And when we add the delicious perfume of vanilla to this mixture of sugar, cacao, and cinnamon, we achieve the
ne plus ultra
of perfection to which such a concoction may be carried.

It is thus to a small number of ingredients that taste and experience have reduced the things which have been mixed with cacao, such as pepper, pimento, anis, ginger, and so on, each of which has been tried out successively.

The cacao plant is native to South America; it is found both on the islands and on the continent; but by now it is agreed that
the trees which give the best fruit are those which flourish along the shores near Maracaibo, in the valleys of Caracas, and in the rich province of Soconusco. There the pod is larger, the sugar less bitter, and the aroma more refined. Since the time when these lands became less inaccessible, such comparisons have been made whenever wished, and skilled palates have not been misled by them.

The Spanish ladies of the New World are madly addicted to chocolate, to such a point that, not content to drink it several times each day, they even have it served to them in church. This sensuality has often brought down upon them the wrath of their bishops; but the latter have ended by closing their eyes to the sin, and the Reverend Father Escobar, whose spiritual reasoning was as subtle as his moral doctrine was accommodating, issued a formal declaration that chocolate made with water was not contrary to the rules of fast days, even evoking (to the profit of his penitents), the time-worn adage,
Liquidum non frangit jejunium
.

Chocolate was brought into Spain during the seventeenth century, and it immediately became popular because of its extremely strong flavor, which was appreciated by women and especially by monks. Fashion has not changed in this respect; and even today, on the Peninsula, chocolate is served whenever there is any reason for offering refreshments.

It was carried over the mountain frontiers with Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III and wife of Louis XIII. Spanish monks, too, made it known by the presents which they sent to their French brothers. The various ambassadors from Spain to Paris also helped make chocolate fashionable, and at the beginning of the Regency it was more commonly known than coffee, since it was drunk as a pleasant aliment, while coffee was still thought of as a luxurious and rare beverage.

It is common knowledge that Linnaeus
²³
called cocoa
cacao theobroma
(drink of the gods). It has always been wondered why he gave it such a strong title: some people have attributed it to his own passionate love for the drink; others to his wish to please his confessor; still others to his gallantry, since it was his queen who was the first to introduce it to common usage.
(Incertum.)

Chocolate has given rise to profound dissertations whose purpose was to determine its nature and its properties and to place it properly in the category of hot, cold, or temperate foods; and it must be admitted that these written documents have done little to set forth the truth.

But with time and experience, those two sublime teachers, it has been shown as proof positive that carefully prepared chocolate is as healthful a food as it is pleasant; that it is nourishing and easily digested; that it does not cause the same harmful effects to feminine beauty which are blamed on coffee, but is on the contrary a remedy for them; that it is above all helpful to people who must do a great deal of mental work, to those who labor in the pulpit or the courtroom, and especially to travelers; that it has produced good results in cases of chronic illness, and that it has even been used as the last resource in diseases of the pylorus.

Chocolate owes these different properties to the fact that, being in truth no more than
eleosaccharum
, there are few substances that contain more nourishing particles for a like weight: all of which makes it almost completely assimilable.

During the last war cacao was scarce, and above all very expensive: we busied ourselves in finding a substitute for it; but all our efforts were fruitless, and one of the blessings of peace has been to rid us of the various brews which we were forced to taste out of politeness, and which had no more to do with chocolate than chicory has to do with real mocha coffee.

Some people complain that they cannot digest chocolate; some, on the other hand, insist that it does not satisfy them and that it digests too quickly.

It is quite possible that the first have only themselves to blame, and that the chocolate they use is either of inferior quality or badly prepared; for good well-made chocolate can be assimilated by any stomach which can still digest even feebly.

As to the others, the remedy is easy: they should fortify themselves at breakfast with a little meat pie, a cutlet, or a skewered kidney; then they should drink down a good bowl of the best
Soconusco chocolate, and they would find themselves thanking God for their supraperfect digestive systems.

This gives me a chance here to put down an observation the correctness of which may be counted on:

When you have breakfasted well and fully, if you will drink a big cup of chocolate at the end you will have digested the whole perfectly three hours later, and you will still be able to dine … Because of my scientific enthusiasm and the sheer force of my eloquence I have persuaded a number of ladies to try this, although they were convinced it would kill them; they have always found themselves in fine shape indeed, and have not forgotten to give the Professor his rightful due.

People who habitually drink chocolate enjoy unvarying health, and are least attacked by a host of little illnesses which can destroy the true joy of living; their physical weight is almost stationary: these are two advantages which anyone can verify among his acquaintanceship and especially among his friends who follow this diet.
²⁴

Here is the proper place to speak of the properties of chocolate drunk with amber, which I myself have checked over a long period of time, and the result of which experiments I am proud to offer to my readers.
*

Very well then: if any man has drunk a little too deeply from the cup of physical pleasure; if he has spent too much time at his desk that should have been spent asleep; if his fine spirits have temporarily become dulled; if he finds the air too damp, the minutes too slow, and the atmosphere too heavy to withstand; if he is obsessed by a fixed idea which bars him from any freedom of thought: if he is any of these poor creatures, we say, let him be given a good pint of amber-flavored chocolate, in the proportions of sixty to seventy-two grains of amber to a pound, and marvels will be performed.

In my own particular way of designating things I call ambered chocolate
chocolate of the unhappy
, since, in each one of the various physical or mental states which I have outlined, there is a common but indefinable ground of suffering, which is like unhappiness.
²⁵

In Spain, chocolate is excellently made; but we have almost given up importing it because it is not uniform in quality and when inferior material is imported we are forced to use it as it comes to us.

Italian chocolates are not at all to the French taste; in general the cacao is over-roasted, which makes the beverage bitter and without nourishment, since a part of the nut itself has been turned into ash.