Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [2]
When it came time to pull it down in 1910, it was saved by the development of the telegraph, which required a tower. Ten years later, it barely survived a request from the construction industry to melt it down for its iron. Only in 1964 did the French decide to keep it for good, designating it an historic structure. Maupassant, if his royalties were sufficient, could avoid looking at it today by dining at one of the most famous restaurants in Paris, the Jules Verne, stylish and animated, often booked months in advance for its food as well as its exceptional view from the second tier of the tower, more than four hundred feet above where he used to have his lunch.
DINNER WITH LORD BYRON
Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) was a wealthy minor poet whose elegant home on St. James Street in London became a gathering place for his literary friends, including William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb. In his book Table Talk, Rogers recalls first meeting Lord Byron when it was arranged he should come to dinner:
“When we sat down to dinner I asked Byron if he would take soup? No, he never took soup. Would he take fish? No, he never took fish. Presently I asked if he would take some mutton? No, he never ate mutton. I then asked if he would take a glass of wine? No, he never tasted wine.
“It was now necessary to inquire what he did eat and drink; and the answer was, nothing but hard biscuits and sodawater. Unfortunately, neither hard biscuits nor sodawater were at hand; and he dined upon potatoes bruised down on his plate and drenched with vinegar. My guests stayed till very late discussing the merits of Walter Scott and Joanna Baillie.
“Some days after, meeting Hobhouse, I said to him, ‘How long will Lord Byron persevere in his present diet?’ He replied, ‘Just about as long as you continue to notice it.’
“I did not then know, what I now know to be a fact—that Byron, after leaving my house, had gone to a club in St. James’s Street, and eaten a hearty meat-supper.”
COFFEE
They have in Turkey a drink called Coffee … as Black as Soot, and of a Strong Scent … which they take, beaten into Powder, in Water, as Hot as they can Drink it; and they take it, and sit at it in their Coffee Houses, which are like our Taverns.
—FRANCIS BACON
Some forty years after Bacon’s death, coffee made its way from Turkey to France with the sultan’s ambassador to the court of Louis XIV, where Mme de Sévigné predicted, with something less than her usual acuity, “There are two things the French will never swallow—Racine’s poetry, and coffee.” She lived long enough to find that she was wrong about both.
The coffee tree, a small evergreen with fragrant white flowers and dark red pods, each containing two beans, is thought to be native to Ethiopia, and East Africa remains a producer, behind South America, where Brazil is the leader. The beverage was made of the roasted, crushed beans and probably developed in Arabia. It then moved northward to Egypt and Turkey, where it became so essential to daily life that in Constantinople, denying a wife her coffee gave her grounds for divorce. When it arrived in Europe and the Americas in the 1600s, it was the thick, unfiltered liquid still served in Turkey, Greece, and the Middle East. Gradually, as it traveled, its preparation was adapted to the taste of its public by filtering or adding milk, sugar, or flavorings.
Always valued for its stimulating effect, coffee contains more caffeine than any other drink. There are about 110 to 150 milligrams of caffeine in a cup of coffee made by the drip method and about 65 to 125 in a percolated cup, nearly twice the amount found in tea. Espresso, though stronger in taste because it is more concentrated, actually has less caffeine than regular