Substituting Coffee and Tea in the Eighteenth Century: A Rural and Material History with Global Implications

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses the material history of coffee and tea by drawing on mid-eighteenth-century substitute recipes collected by physicians in different provinces of Sweden, applying perspectives from economic history, the history of science, medicine, and globalization. The starting point for the analysis is that a substitute can be said to reflect what are perceived as the most important properties, in terms of look, feel, taste, and scent, of the thing being copied. The products of a predominantly self-sustained agrarian world, the tea and coffee substitutes offered a distinctive rural alternative to the new exotic beverages. In terms of ecology and economy, this context encompassed large parts of central and north-eastern Europe; it also involved areas with a history of consumption that differed considerably from those of the cosmopolitan elites which have hitherto dominated the scholarship on eighteenth-century coffee and tea. The article finally suggests that the ways in which early modern substitutes were consumed and processed helped pave the way for the mass consumption of imported goods in rural areas of Europe in the following centuries.