Food and Drink: Coffee and Cocoa

• Post Date: 3/1/2019
• Author: Registration staff
• Reading Time: 3 minute read

• Collections tag

At Spurlock, we love to talk about food. Humans need food. Humans love food! It provides sustenance, highlights moments of celebration, and promotes sharing. Looking at objects in the Museum’s artifact collection, it’s also cool to see how one type of food is prepared and eaten in different ways across different cultures. For our third entry, we will look at coffee and cocoa.

Coffee and cocoa beans are processed in similar ways to produce different popular drinks. Beans are roasted and ground, then combined with water or milk to make drinks that are enjoyed around the world.

The molinillo or batidor is a wooden whisk used to whip up chocolate drinks. These drinks can include roughly ground cacao beans, as opposed to cocoa powder, and spices in their recipes.

Coffee is roasted prior to drinking. These coffee roasting spoons are held over a fire to prepare the beans for grinding and drinking. Strong Turkish coffee is heated over flame in an ibrik, a small container with a long handle and a spout.

Molinillo/Batidor: 1998.19.2886, 2000.01.0340, 2000.01.0342