A black coffee prepared the old way, steeped in boiling water then left to settle. The fuel for long evenings of study and academic conversation.

Why this dish? Coffee was, in Linnaeus's time, a fashionable drink in 18th-century Sweden, prized by the scholarly and bourgeois circles to which he belonged in Uppsala. The naturalist drank it, as was customary among the men of science of his era.

This drink from the East makes a great noise in our salons, and I confess I take it willingly. The beans are coarsely ground, thrown into boiling water, and one waits until the grounds settle at the bottom of the pot before pouring, clear and burning hot, into the cup. It sharpens the mind for the evening's work — most useful for one who must arrange the living world into classes, orders, and genera late into the night.

How it was made : Kokkaffe — coffee boiled directly in water, without a filter — was the traditional Swedish method. The grounds were left to settle at the bottom of the pot. Coffee was even temporarily banned in Sweden in the 18th century, a sign of the craze (and suspicion) it aroused.

The contemporary twist : Recreate a mini 'fika,' the Swedish coffee-and-pastry ritual, by accompanying the coffee with a cardamom biscuit.

Carl von Linnaeus · Charactorium