Coffee itself offered a taste of the exotic by providing the vicarious experience of exoticism without actual contact with the foreign culture. This allowed coffee drinkers to "contain the challenge of the exotic while simultaneously indulging in it." (Finkelstein,"Dining Out," 204.)¹⁰ Again pictorial evidence is instructive of this aspect of the coffee ritual. Thus we see Madame de Pompadour using the accoutrements of the coffeehouse--cup, saucer and pipe, while playing a sultaness who is served by an oriental servant. Such paintings depict the link between coffee and perceptions of the Orient in the European mindset. The coffee ritual became the setting for enactments of these fantasies.

La Sultane (Madame de Pompadour), 1755. J. Beauvarlet, From Ulla Heisse and Dr. Beatrix Freifrau von Wolff Metternich, Coffeum wirft die Jungfrau um: Kaffe und Erotik, 24