Colonial American beverages
Colonial American beverages
Hot, non-alcoholic
Coffee, tea and chocolate were popular non-alcaholic hot beverages during American Colonial times. These imports were expensive, but not beyond the reach of the average person. Folks too poor to afford the *real thing* brewed hot beverages from herbs, flowers, bark, roots, and woody stems. Alas, there was no ready substitute for chocolate! Presumably, cider could have been served warm too.
"The slave labor system and the expansion of international trade that brought sugar, molasses, and rum into prominence also led to the rise of three new nonalcoholic drinks: chocolate, tea, and coffee. "Groceries" was the term used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for newly imported consumable commodities from distant places."
---America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking, Keith Stavely & Kathleen Fitzgerald [University of North Carolina Press:Chapel Hill NC] 2004 (p. 266)
"...chocolate was a popular drink for all ages. The beverage was simple to prepare for the imported cocoa beans were merely ground and then brewed for the desired thickness with water or milk. As Americans moved further into the eighteenth century, chocolate and coffeehouses became popular in seaport towns such as Boston, New York, and Phildelphia...The taste of coffees, teas, and chocolates was unpredictable at best. Today's beverages are a smooth blend of leaves or beans of many types. However, in colonial times, a ship's carge usually included not a mixture of several strong and mild beans, but only the products of a single plantation. Past experiences with the crop of a particular producer were of little value in judging later shipments, for changing climatic and soil conditions altered the tastes of a particular grower's crop from year to year...When coffee was not available or was beyond the means of the poor farmer, parched rye, chestnuts, or grape sedds were substituted for coffee beans and brewed into hot drinks...Tea substitutes were also popular, particularly on the frontier where imported merchandise was difficult to purchase. Sassafras tea was considered particularly pleasing..." ---Hung, Strung & Potted: A History of Eating in Colonial America, Sally Smith Booth [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1971 (p. 199-202)
What did patriots drink instead of tea after the famous Boston party?
"Colonial tea addicts were sorely tested when the nationwide tea strike began about ten years before the Revolutionary War. Supporters of the boycott against British tea published numerous testimonials by patriotic doctors who claimed that tea-drinking not only shortened the life of a drinker, but weaked his spleen and stomach...High prices as well as patriotism discouraged many from drinking tea...Rhubarb, goldenrod, strawberry, and blackberry leaves were also collected for brewing into tea during the long show of solidarity against the British. The later revolution saw a great decreas in the amount of American tea-drinking, and in the first years of the new republic, coffee became the overwhelming favorite drink. Though never to regain its prewar popualrity as a general beverage, tea remained popular as a medicinal home remedy for various illnesses, a turnabout from the boycott claims to the opposit effect."
---ibid (p. 202)
"The young ladies of Boston signed a pledge, 'We the daughters of those patriots who have, and do now appear for the public intrest, and in that principally regard their posterity, as do with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of foreign tea, in hope to frustrate a plan that tends to deprive a whole community of all that is valuable to life.' They were joined by others around the country, drinking instead 'Balsamic hyperion' made from dried raspberry leaves, or infusions of other herbs. The Boston Tea Party did not destroy the American taste for tea, although few retailers in Boston dared to offer it for sale for a number of years. George and Martha Washington continued to serve the best quality tea"
---A Social History of Tea, Jane Pettigrew [National Trust Enterprises:London] 2001 (p. 48-51)
About drinking chocolate
"...any collected manuscript from the last quarter of the seventeenth century will surely have recipes involving chocolate; chocolate became the rage among the ladies and those who would be."
---Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess [Columbia University Press: New York] 1981 (p. 451)
Colonial-era chocolate recipe
"To make Chocolate. Scrape four ounces of chocolate and pour a quart of boiling water upon it, mill it well with a chocolate mill and sweeten it to your taste. Give it a boil and let it stand all night, then mill it again very well. Boil it two minutes, then mill it till it will leave a froth upon the top of your cups."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, facsimile 1769 edition with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997 (p. 163)
Distilled spirits: Whiskey, Rum, Madeira, Sherry, Brandy, cider & mobby
Brewed: beer, mead & metheglin, (both made with honey)
Wines & wine mixes: raisin, elderberry, orange, gooseberry, currant, cherry, birch, quince, clary or cowslip, turnep, raspberry, blackberry, damson, grape, apricot, balm, lemon,), hippocras (wine & spice mix), Stepony, shrub, punch & sangria
Cream drinks (served warm or cold): caudle, sack posset, syllabub
Medicinal beverages (some alcoholic; others not): cordials, plague water, heart water, hysterical water, fever water, beef tea, toast water, apple water.
Sources: The New Art of Cookery According to Present Practice, Richard Briggs [1792], Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess
Рецепты напитков:
Beef teaWhat is beef tea?
A concentrated protein beverage extracted from the essence of beef used to restore human health from the 18th century forwards. Early recipes provided instructions using real beef. Variations permitted other animal proteins (veal, lamb, chicken) and occasionally included vegetables. Florence Nightengale used beef tea to restore fallen Crimean War soldiers. American Civil War soldiers were likewise treated. In the 1880s commercial beef extracts were employed to make a quick beef tea. Some concoctions proved more healthful than others. A survey of late 19th/early 20th century USA newspapers and cookbook confirm the popularity of homemade beef tea for the general malaise called "what ails you."
What were the healthful properties of beef tea?
"Beef tea may be used to advantage
1. To give variety to a liquid diet.
2. When much water is to be ingested.
3. On account of the warmth that it gives.
4. In cases of weakened digestion.
It stimulates the appetite. Meat extractives are the greatest know stimulants to gastric juice."
--- Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, by Fannie Farmer [Little, Brown:Boston] 1911 (p. 83)
[NOTE: Sample recipe from this book here.]
How to make beef tea?
[1769]
"To make Beef Tea
take a pound of lean beef, cut it in very thin slices, put it into a jar, and pour a quart of boiling water upon it. Cover it very close to keep in the steam, let it stand by the fire. It is very good for a weak constitution. It must be drunk when it is new milk warm."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, transcsribed 1769 edition with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997 (p. 160)
[NOTE: This book also offers a recipe for Chicken Water, different from Chicken broth.]
Lemonade
[1769]
"Lemonade for the same use. To one quart of boiled water add the juice of six lemons, rub the rinds of the lemons with sugar to your own taste. When the water is near cold mix the juice and sugar with it, then bottle it for use."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, (1769), with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997 (p. 172)
A rum punch[1770]
"[A rum punch]
The peel of 8 Oranges and 8 Lemons in 1 quart of rum. 3 Gallons of Water boild with 3 lb. of loaf Sugar and the Whites of 8 Eggs. 2 and 3/4 pints of orange juice and 1 and 3/4 Pints of Lemon juice. strain the quart of rum from the Peel and add one Gallon more of rum to rest of the ingredients."
---A Colonial Plantation Cookbook: The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770, [South Carolina] edited with an Introduction by Richard J. Hooker [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia SC] 1984 (p. 139)