It's no accident, I think, that a cup of coffee is approximately the size and temperature of a human heart. Though it does not beat with life, it steams and radiates and arouses the senses with its scintillating aroma, its flavor, its warmth. We hunch over it seeking comfort and affirmation, our hands clasping it to absorb the heat. It's a poor substitute for love, grace, talent, and good looks, but a hot cup of coffee is a satisfying thing to hold onto early in the morning, while the chill of night remains in your bones and you're not yet ready to face the responsibilities of daytime.
Coffee is such a common ingredient of our daily routines that it's hard to imagine life without it.
Yet until the seventeenth century it was unknown in Europe and confined only to northern Africa and the Arab world. The coffee plant was found originally only in Ethiopia, and our word for it comes from the Turkish, kahve, and the Arabic, qahwah. When traders brought the brew to Europe, Christians were wary of its stimulatory qualities and declared it an invention of the devil. Then Pope Clement VIII tried a cup and liked the brew so much that he baptized it, and the Western world has been on a caffeine jag ever since. No doubt coffee was brewed outside over open fires for centuries before it found its way into the posh coffeehouses of Vienna and Paris.