Tea, Coffee & Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine - Hardcover

King, Melanie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1851244069 ISBN 13: 9781851244065

Publisher: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2015

Synopsis

There are few things in the world more pleasing than a decadent cup of hot chocolate, a steaming mug of one’s favorite tea, or that first wonderful sip of freshly brewed coffee. Three of the great culinary obsessions of the twenty-first century, tea, coffee, and chocolate are long-time favorites of both casual diners and foodies, But how did we become so enamored of the big three?
           
In her mouthwatering new book, Melanie King offers a concise cultural history. All three beverages hail from faraway places: tea came first from China, coffee from the Middle East, and chocolate from Central America. Physicians and politicians alike were quick to comment in newspapers and popular periodicals on their supposed perils or health benefits. Readers learn that coffee was recommended in the seventeenth century as protection against the bubonic plague. Tea was thought to make women unattractive and men “unfit to do their business,” while a cup of chocolate was supposed to have exactly the opposite effect on the drinker’s sex life and physical appearance. As consumption of these newly discovered delicacies grew, merchants seized on the opportunity by setting up coffee houses or encouraging ever-more-elaborate tea-drinking rituals.
           
Filled with fascinating and often funny anecdotes—from a goatherd whose flock became frisky after eating coffee berries to a duchess with a goblet of poisoned chocolate, Tea, Coffee & Chocolate shows how the rowdy initial reception of these drinks forms the roots of today’s enduring caffeine culture.

About this title

About the Author

Melanie King is the author or editor of several books, including Can Onions Cure Ear-Ache?: Medical Advice from 1769 and Secrets in a Dead Fish: The Spying Game in the First World War, both also published by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Review

`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 *

Edition details

• Publisher: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1851244069
• ISBN 13: 9781851244065
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 176