Cream, Poison, 2 Sugars

The coffee served in the private offices of European Commissioners tasted decidedly odd, even though the espresso machines cost more than $7,500 each.

The metallic tang was too much for one official, who sent samples from his machine back to his native Austria for testing — only to receive results suggesting that the European Union’s most senior figures were being slowly poisoned.

Now the Commission’s entire collection of elegant Cimbali coffee-makers, together worth $153,500, have been mothballed while the Italian company — which disputes the findings — carries out its own analysis.

The tests commissioned in Austria by Alexander Just, an archivist with a background in biology, suggested that in every cup that he tested he found up to 175 times the recommended intake of nickel and doses of lead that were 16 percent above the level considered safe.