Some habits are not easily
forgotten, especially when involving familiar fragrances.
As the French Prout wrote, we all
have a ‘madeleine’ – a trigger that brings us back to a nostalgic moment of our
past.
For Claudia, this trigger involves a
Bialetti Moka Express coffeemaker.
Every morning during her childhood,
Claudia woke up to the delicious smell of coffee that her granddad prepared for
the family. The fragrance would fill the house from top to bottom. Nice, in
Provence, is one of the parts of France that once was Italian – and it can
still be felt in its culinary traditions. The infamous Bialetti Moka
coffeemaker was a normal part of Claudia’s household habits, but it would have
been true for her neighbours too.
What does this coffeemaker mean for
Mediterranean people?
The ritual of coffee making with a
Bialetti has been well summarised this way:
“Unscrew the water compartment and
fill it up exactly the right amount.
Open the pot of freshly ground
coffee beans, inhale the characteristic smell.
Add a few spoonful of the brown
coarse powder in the funnel.
Insert the funnel on top of the
water compartment and screw it back to the top with just the right amount of
strength. Simple and familiar gestures, anticipating the intense happiness of
that moment when the coffee fragrance spreads in the kitchen, accompanied by
the simultaneous gurgling of the coffeemaker.”
(The water is pressured by the heat
through the funnel, acquiring the flavour of the ground coffee and ending in
the top compartment with a gurgling sound)
The magic of this small coffeemaker also lies in its familiar shape
which stays practically unchanged since its invention in 1933.
Alphonse Bialetti worked in aluminium (tin) industry in France then
returned to his country after WW1 in 1918. He observed local women wash
clothing using a type of washer with a central tube that spread the hot soapy
water evenly. He imagined using this system for a coffeemaker and after years
of experimentation, the Moka Express was created with a patent from Luigi De
Ponti.
However it was Alphonse’s son, Renato, which made of the Bialetti such a
hit. This was after WW2 : using the new concepts of marketing emerging at
the time, Renato drew a caricature of his father as a moustached, small and
chubby man with his finger raised to obtain a coffee. This image combined with
the slogan “An espresso at home as in the coffee shop!” transformed Bialetti
into the legendary brand that it is now.
Since that time many different machines and techniques to make espresso
have been invented, notably with capsule-types machines meant for domestic use.
However in Hongrie, we are not very fond of those: not only do they create much
waste, cost excessively and reduce the range of coffee beans that people
consume, but we cannot get used to their lack of gurgling sounds effects.
We stayed loyal customers of
Bialetti, with all its different sizes, accumulating an army of little
moustache men to provide for busy breakfast times. Their presence is a
reassuring feeling and the coffee aroma they produce is now part of our life
habits. We welcome discussion about coffee choices during breakfast time, but
you have been warned that we are biased!
Bialetti: what else?
