ce about
this time; but it was not until 1800 that De Belloy's pot, employing the
original French drip method, appeared, signaling another step forward in
coffee making--percolation.

_De Belloy and Count Rumford_

De Belloy's pot was probably made of iron or tin, afterward of
porcelain; and it has served as a model for all the percolation devices
that followed it for the next hundred years. It does not seem to have
been patented, and not much is known of the inventor. About this period,
it was the common practise in England to boil coffee in the good
old-fashioned way, and to "fine" (clarify) it with isinglass. This moved
Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson), an American-British scientist, then
living in Paris, to make a study of scientific coffee-making, and to
produce an improved drip device known as Rumford's percolator. He has
been generally credited with the invention of the percolator; but, as
pointed out in a previous chapter, this honor seems to be De Belloy's
and not Rumford's.

Count Rumford embodied his observations and conclusions in a verbose
essay entitled _Of the excellent qualities of coffee and the art of
making it in the highest perfection_, published in London in 1812. In
this treatise he describes and illustrates the Rumford percolator.

Brillat-Savarin, the famous French gastronomist, who also wrote on
coffee in his _VIme Meditation_, said of the De Belloy pot:

I have tried, in the course of time, all methods and of all those
which have been suggested to me up to today (1825) and with a full
knowledge of the matter in hand. I prefer the De Belloy method,
which consists of pouring the boiling water upon the coffee which
has been placed in the vessel of porcelain or silver, pierced with
very small holes. I have attempted to make coffee in a boiler at
high pressure, but I have had as a result a coffee full of extracts
and bitterness which would scrape the throat of a Cossack.

Brillat-Savarin had something also to say on the subject of grinding
coffee, his conclusion being that it was "better to pound the coffee
than to grind it."

He refers to M. Du Belloy, archbishop of Paris, "who loved good things
and was quite an epicure," and says that Napoleon showed him deference
and respect. This may have been Jean Baptiste De Belloy, who, according
to Didot, was born in 1709 and died in 1808, and, it is thought likely,
was the inventor of the De Belloy pot.