Student's manual in household arts

Manufacture. Tea is made from the young leaves of the tea plant, a flowering shrub belonging to the camellia family. The many different varieties of tea may all come from the same plant, the size ot the leaf, the care in handling and picking and the method of curing contributing to the differences in the teas when they are finally ready for market. The tea made from the first tiny leaves on the plant is called BBVERAUES 179 Pekoe or Flowery or Orange Pekoe. The word pekoe means hair, the young leaves being covered with a long silky hair. This makes the finest flavored tea and is very expensive, sometimes bringing as much as twenty dollars a pound. The leaves next lower down on the stalk are used for Souchong tea and sometimes the still larger leaves are used for a tea called Congou Each plant furnishes from three to four pickings a year. Any of these teas may be black or green according to the way in which they are cured. For green tea the leaves are put into ovens to be roasted as soon as they are picked. They are then rolled by hand and again roasted for several hours. When the tea is ready for market it is a dark green color. Artificial coloring is sometimes used but the United States government has now passed a law prohibiting the sale of artificially colored teas in this country. The leaves for black tea are allowed to stand in the sun to wither after picking. They are then worked by hand and moistened, then left in piles to ferment. They are finally dried in a charcoal furnace. During this drying or roasting process the leaves turn black. These teas are then sorted and packed in lead-lined boxes ready for shipping to foreign markets. Composition. The most important ingredients of tea are theine, tannic acid and a light oil that gives to the tea its characteristic odor. The theine is a mild stimulant that is beneficial to adults if not taken to excess. Tannic acid is the same substance that is extracted from tanbark and used in the manufacture of leather. When taken into the stomach it injures the lining of the stomach and hinders digestion. It also prevents the wear- ing out of body tissue. There is much less tannic acid in black tea than in green tea. COFFEE. History. Coffee is supposed to get its name from Kaffa, a province of Abyssinia where the tree probably originated. "There is no coffee grown in the United States, but we use more of it than any other country. COFFEE PLANT. II. Blossom, b. Berry, c. Pulp. d. Bean. Manufacture. The coffee tree grows in all tropical countries. It is an evergreen tree with fruit that resembles our cherry except that each berry usually contains two seeds with the flat sides towards each other. The berries are picked from the trees and taken to the factories where the pulp is cleaned from the seeds. The seeds are then dried in the sun for several weeks after which the two closely fitting husks or skins surrounding the seeds are removed. The seeds are then sorted according to size and packed into bags ready for shipment. All of the work of cleaning and sorting is now done by machinery though much of it used to be done by hand. The raw coffee bean is of an olive green color and is comparatively tasteless. It must be roasted to a rich brown color to bring out the appetizing flavor and fragrance that we are accustomed to. Mocha and Java are the two best known brands of coffee. Very little of the so-called Mocha coffee ever grew in Arabia, and but little of the Java coffee ever saw the island of Java, the names being merely given to certain kinds of. coffee beans. Composition.