Coffee was first cultivated in Ethiopia in the sixth century A.D. The coffee berries were consumed whole, or a wine was made out of the fermented fruits. Coffee as we know it, made from ground, roasted beans, dates to the thirteenth century, and by the fifteenth century, coffee was popular all across the Islamic world. The drink was introduced to Europe around 1615. The ancient method of preparing coffee was to boil the crushed roasted beans in water until the liquid reached the desired strength. The typical coffee pot was a long-handled brass pot with a narrow throat. This kind of pot is still used throughout the Arab world, and is known in the West as a Turkish coffee pot.

In England and America, boiling coffee in a sauce pan was for a long time the standard method. Sometimes the coffee was...