Tea, Coffee and Chocolate

How We Fell in Love with Caffeine

Melanie King

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Hardback

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English

Bodleian Library
10 December 2015

History; Non-alcoholic beverages

Did you know that coffee was recommended as protection against the bubonic plague in the seventeenth century?

Or that tea was believed to make men 'unfit to do their business' and blamed for women becoming unattractive?

On the other hand, a cup of chocolate was supposed to have exactly the opposite effect on the drinker's sex life and physical appearance.

How did the rowdy and often comical initial reception of these drinks form the roots of today's enduring caffeine culture?

These three beverages arrived in England in the 1650s from faraway, exotic places: tea from China, coffee from the Middle East and chocolate from Mesoamerica. Physicians, diarists and politicians were quick to comment on their supposed benefits and alleged harmfulness, using newspapers, pamphlets and handbills both to promote and denounce their sudden popularity. Others seized the opportunity to serve the growing appetite for these newly discovered drinks by setting up coffee houses or encouraging one-upmanship in increasingly elaborate tea-drinking rituals.

From the tale of the goatherd whose animals became frisky on coffee berries to a duchess with a goblet of poisoned chocolate, this book, illustrated with eighteenth-century satirical cartoons and early advertisements, tells the extraordinary story of our favourite hot drinks.

By: Melanie King
Imprint: Bodleian Library
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 170mm, Width: 110mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 222g
ISBN: 9781851244065
ISBN 10: 1851244069
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 10 December 2015
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Melanie King is the author of Secrets in a Dead Fish (2014) and Can Onions Cure Ear-ache? (2012).

Reviews for Tea, Coffee and Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine

‘Melanie King has written a delightful, diminutive stocking filler account of Tea, Coffee and Chocolate, using Bodleian archives. The story of these three beverages, all of which came to England in the mid-seventeenth century, is worth retelling. When I say ‘stocking filler’ I don’t mean slight or under researched, just lovely.' * Oxford Today * ‘This nicely produced small book tells a familiar story, but one which stands the retelling, especially when so intelligently and enjoyably written.’ * Petits Propos Culinaires *