Drinking coffee from a saucer was certainly done as a way to quickly cool down the hot beverage inside the cup. Because coffee was boiled, it was served extremely hot. Saucers, some of which were more like shallow bowls, allowed the liquid to cool faster by spreading it over more surface area. It was more efficient, and more polite, to drink coffee from a saucer rather than slurping it while it was hot.

It's not clear where drinking coffee or tea from the saucer started as a practice. There are references to the practice being common in Russia and Scandinavia. In Sweden, they purposely overfilled their cup so they could drink from the saucer; they would hold a lump of sugar in their front teeth and sip the hot beverage through it in a tradition called "dricka p� bit" or "drink with a lump."