COFFEE

Remove bitterness from percolators and other coffee pots by filling with water, adding four tablespoons of salt and percolating or boiling as usual.

Coffee from: 'Kitchen Directory and American Housewife' (1844)
"Use a tablespoonful ground to a pint of boiling water [less than a quarter of what we would use today]. Boil in tin pot twenty to twenty-five minutes. If boiled longer it will not taste fresh and lively. Let stand four or five minutes to settle, pour off grounds into a coffee pot or urn. Put fish skin or isinglass size of a nine-pence in pot when put on to boil or else the white and shell of half an egg to a couple of quarts of coffee."

Cooking - Cookware information Posted by: Blueshoots.com

Orignal Source :http://www.foodreference.com/html/tcoffee.html