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| <poem>Such coffee as in Poland you'll not find elsewhere:

In a good house, in Poland, by old custom there,

Which as jet-black as coal is, and as amber limpid:

Is as fragrant as mocca, and as honey viscid.</poem>

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It seems that coffee had become well established as a popular drink in Poland by Mickiewicz's time. After all, as you may remember from [[What has the Battle of Vienna given us?|my post about the Battle of Vienna]], the Poles had learned to enjoy coffee already back in the 17th century – from the Ottoman Turks, whom the Polish forces so valiantly vanquished. Or did they? Would they really ape the habits of their enemies? Let's see what another Polish poet had to write about what he called ''kaffa'' two centuries before Mickiewicz:

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| <poem>In Malta, I recall, we have sampled ''kaffa'',

A drink for the pashas, Murat and Mustafa.

A brew so disgusting, of heathens uncouth,

Let in never befoul a good Christian's mouth!</poem>

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| <poem>Oh, how the taste of coffee sweet is,

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| Some peasants drunk a few litres each in a single evening. They didn't realize coffee is a liquid more potent than alcohol. An ambulance from a nearby town took them to a hospital for treatment of a serious heart condition. The rest of the populace, having learned from this sudden and sad experience, reverted to their old alcoholic ways.

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All other Slavic languages except Polish, that is. The Polish word for tea is ''herbata'', which comes from Latin ''herba thea'', or "tea herb". But it couldn't be that simple. The word for tea may have come from the west, but the word for "kettle" – ''czajnik'' – comes from Russian. Why isn't it called ''herbatnik'', you might ask. Well, this word is already taken; it refers to a biscuit to be served with tea.

As you could see in the map (or mug) at the top of this post, there are only two predominantly tea-drinking regions in Europe: the British Isles in the west and the former Russian Empire in the east. The English tea-drinking tradition dates back to the times when the commodity was still being imported from Asia almost exclusively by Dutch and Portuguese merchants. The first batch of tea appeared in England in 1657, but it's the 1662 marriage of King Charles II, who grew up in the Netherlands, to the Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza, that is remembered as the birth of the English tea-drinking culture. Catherine, in particular, was known for inviting her guests for a light meal centered on tea and cakes at (you guessed it) five o'clock.

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| One of the golden rules for hostesses entertaining American troops should be not to serve them coffee unless they know how to make it in the American manner. Most Americans are unanimous in condemning Australian coffee for being too weak, for being made from coffee mixed with chicory, and because the milk is boiled with the coffee. At one party recently an American, after tasting his hostess's coffee, asked in all innocence, "What's this – cocoa?"

The same piece then advised to use a "special kind of percolator" and that "a pinch of salt and mustard added to the coffee will improve its flavour." Anyway, Australians increasingly saw coffee as a token of modernity, glamour, convenience (especially after Nestlé instant coffee appeared in 1948) and being a nation all its own rather than a colonial outpost of the British Empire. The trend continued after the war and today, as we saw above, coffee is at least as popular down under as tea is.

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| źródło = ''ibid''., p. 33, own translation

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== Bibliography ==

{{Nawigacja|poprz=A Fried Pie and a Fish Dish}}