No beverage in the world is as beloved as coffee: just think that every second, approximately 12,000 cups are consumed globally, for a total of approximately 400 billion cups a year. Coffee, whether it's the classic Italian espresso or one of its many global variations, is an irresistible treat, capable of giving you energy but also of enjoying a moment of relaxation and conviviality.
Yet there are still many false myths about this incredibly popular beverage, as well as a lack of knowledge about its history: do you know, for example, where the word "coffee" comes from and how it came to be used for this product? We'll tell you.
The Origin of The Word "Coffee"
Just as there are different stories about the origin of coffee, there are different versions of how it got its name. One of the most widely supported is that it comes from the Turkish term qahve, the word that was used when coffee spread from Turkey to Asia, North Africa, and finally the West.
In turn, however, the Turkish word seems to derive from another word, this time Arabic: the term qahwa, still used by Arabs today to refer to coffee, although it doesn't exactly mean that. It is a word used to indicate a drink with exciting and stimulating effects, initially used only for wine but which, starting from the end of the 14th century, was also extended to coffee.
Another hypothesis among the most widespread is that the word coffee comes from Ethiopia, specifically from the term kaffa which could refer to the homonymous region of south-western Ethiopia, known for being a land where coffee plants grew spontaneously and luxuriantly, or to the city of Kaffa, where the black drink was said to have been served in collective rites and exported throughout the East in medieval times.
From the Arabic Term to The European Word
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Venetians began bringing coffee from Africa, and thanks to them, the drink spread to the West: at that time, it was consumed without sugar, just as was the custom in its homeland. And along with coffee, of course, its name also spread, albeit adapted to the new territory.
The first historical evidence of the term "coffee" in the English language dates back to 1582: in this year the word came into common usage, derived from the Dutch term koffie. In Italy, however, the first attestations of the word caffè are documented between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the noun was already used in Morosini's Report of the Venetian Ambassadors to the Senate in 1585, and the first recorded reference to it appears in dictionaries in 1666. By the nineteenth century, coffee was such a popular beverage that it was a widely used word, even used in cookbooks.
One of the most staunch supporters of coffee is Pellegrino Artusi: in his "Scienza in cucina" he recalls that:
«this precious drink that spreads a joyful excitement throughout the body, was called the intellectual drink, the friend of men of letters, scientists and poets because, by shaking the nerves, it clears ideas, makes the imagination more vivid and thoughts quicker».
It was the "master" of Italian cuisine who proposed a new hypothesis on the origins of coffee as a beverage, an origin that remains uncertain and surrounded by countless legends. Until the 19th century, the most widely accepted hypotheses were Ethiopia and Persia, then Artusi, in his textbook Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, hypothesized that the first coffee came from Mokha, a city in Yemen.
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