Turkish coffee

Freshly roasted beans are ground to a fine powder, and the coffee, cold water and sugar go into the pot together and are brewed slowly over heat to produce a foam. It is served in small cups with a glass of water, as UNESCO’s description of the tradition sets out.

Source: Turkish coffee culture and tradition, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (2013)

Because the sugar is brewed in rather than stirred in afterwards, decide how sweet you want it when you order. And because nothing is filtered, the coffee keeps the oils a paper filter would catch: Harvard’s Nutrition Source lists Turkish coffee among the unfiltered brews whose diterpenes can raise LDL cholesterol.

Source: Coffee, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, The Nutrition Source

Coffee houses opened in Istanbul in the early 1550s. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam records that the chronicler Âlî Mustafa Efendi dated them to 1553, while İbrahim Peçevi, writing in the 17th century, credited two men — Hakem from Aleppo and Şems from Damascus — with opening the first in the Tahtakale district in 1554–55.

Source: Kahvehane, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi

In 2013 UNESCO inscribed Turkish coffee culture and tradition on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The listing describes the coffee as a sign of hospitality with a place in ceremonies such as engagements, and notes that the grounds left in the cup are often used to tell fortunes.

Source: Turkish coffee culture and tradition, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (2013)

A story widely repeated online holds that an Ottoman wife could divorce a husband who failed to keep her supplied with coffee. We did not find a primary source for it.