This section is from the book "Practical Dietetics: With Reference To Diet In Disease", by Alida Frances Pattee. Also available from Amazon: Practical Dietetics: With Reference to Diet in Disease.
2 tablespoons coffee. 1 cup cold water.
Increase quantity of coffee to suit the taste.
From the percolator take out the cup with its tube, fill the percolator with the quantity of water desired, replace cup and tube (covering tube with thumb), and put in the coffee, then put on the spreader plate and cover. Cook fifteen minutes.
If warm or hot water is used it takes less time for cooking. Never use boiling water. It takes a little longer with the urns than with the pots.
When heat is applied to the foot of the pot, a jet of water lukewarm at first, but quickly increasing in temperature as the pumping process goes on, is forced up through the tube, falls on the spreader plate; by it, it is evenly distributed over the coffee, through which it percolates down into the pot again. This pumping continues until the water reaches the boiling point, when water and steam together come up through the tube. The coffee is thus ready to serve.
Coffee made in this way has a delicious aroma, a fine flavor and an absence of the bitter taste caused by boiling. Many can drink coffee made in this way that cannot when made in other ways.
Buy coffee in the berry and grind it fresh every day, for ground coffee soon loses its aroma.
 
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