Why Lemon Peel?

I'm confused about this, and I've been confused for a VERY long time.  What's with the little piece of lemon peel that gets dumped on the side of my cup of espresso in restaurants?  By the way, "espresso" is the modern word for "demi-tasse" among us older folks.

Anyway, I have no idea what the taste of lemon peel has to do with coffee.  I hate leaving it on the table (seems wasteful), but I can never get the waiter to leave it off.  I can get them to leave the sugar in the kitchen (why ruin a good cup with sugar?), but the lemon peel almost never goes away.  So, I give up: I just leave it.

The thing is, I do my share of travel to countries where expressed coffee is a way of life, and I don't recall ever seeing the lemon peel decoration.  I wonder if they stop foreign waiters at the border, and train them to do this?

Next some bartender will stick a slice of lemon into my beer.  But that's a subject for another day....

If you're a fan of puckering up for coffee, we sell citrus-forward coffees on Coffee Kind.