By one account, coffee was discovered in the ninth century a.d. by an Abyssinian goatherd named Kaldi, who noticed that the berries his sheep were eating made them unusually energetic. Kaldi ate one of the berries and felt an exhilarating jolt. He soon began sharing his discovery with fellow goatherds. Drowsy monks also found that the stimulating berries helped them stay alert during prayer. Years passed before Arabs began roasting and brewing the beans, but eventually coffee evolved as a hot drink and became enormously popular throughout Arabia and Turkey. By the seventeenth century, coffee was popular throughout Europe and was even considered a cure for such ailments as gout, scurvy, headaches, constipation, and the common cold.

The first instant coffee was available in the form of a liquid extract in 1838, when the United States Congress used it as a substitute for rum in the...