Hard to believe. But European coffee history would have been barely possible without its own substitute products. In fact, coffee surrogates were essentially responsible for coffee becoming popular and a daily beverage.
What were coffee surrogates? The list is incredibly long, reads adventurously and is sometimes bone-dry. Although "bone-dry" would be a too kind description for one or the other surrogate. These are products that completely or partially replaced, substitute or stretch coffee. Here is an excerpt from a list by Mark Pendergrast from Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World: "almonds, arrowroot, asparagus seeds and stems, baked horse liver, barberries, barley, beechnuts, beetroot, boxwood seeds, bran, bread crusts, brewing waste, brick dust, burnt rags, burdock, carob, carrot, chickpea, chicory, chrysanthemum seeds, coal ash, cocoa shells, comfrey roots, cranberries, currants, dahlia tubers, date seeds, dirt, dog biscuits, elderberries, <…> sand, sassafras, sawdust <…>." And so on. In Pendergrast's book, this list spans over half a page. Which brings us to a point we haven't discussed yet: how these surrogates were colored or made to resemble coffee. But that is another chapter, dealing with lead, arsenic, and dyes, and has little to do with the initial surrogates that helped coffee on its extraordinary career path.
Historical Perspective
Regarding the initial situation. While coffee became deeply anchored in the Islamic world by the time the Arab region was unified by the Ottoman Empire (1520), in Europe, we were still looking mostly into beer and wine mugs. It was not until 125 years later that the first coffee house opened in Venice. Others followed in Oxford (1650), Marseille (1659), Bremen (1673), and Vienna (1685).
At that time, coffee was a luxury good, barely affordable for the common citizen. It was drunk in wealthy circles. These served as role models for the general public. The Federers and Clooneys of the 17th century were, for example, Süleiman Aga. This Turkish envoy hosted a coffee ceremony at the court of Louis XIV and delighted his guests with it. Soon after, coffee was the high-end trend product at European royal courts, a sort of Nespresso of its day. The common people took their lead from the noble celebrities of the time. They heard about the new drink from the south and thirsted to try it. At first, however, this pleasure was granted only to a few. Coffee was barely affordable. It was all the more coveted. What had to happen, happened. On one hand, inventive minds invented substitute products; on the other, true myths soon developed about the new product. From aphrodisiac to medicine for the expansion of the mind, all sorts of things were attributed to coffee. Incidentally, not only by its supporters. The opponents were certainly also precursors to its success. Some who feared their beverage monopolies were in danger (beer, wine), others who saw the winds of a free spirit blowing in the newly emerging coffee house culture and feared such an awakening citizenry. From country to country, those in power reacted differently. With bans, restrictions, but also openness toward the new drink – certainly also dependent on whether one maintained colonies oneself that produced the new stimulant.
Where bans prevailed (e.g., Switzerland and Germany), alternatives were sought all the more creatively. And now we are at the surrogates. Because people wanted to drink the new miracle beverage. If necessary, also stretched or as a close an alternative as possible. Chicory won the race here, more precisely, its bitter-tasting root. Cut and roasted with the addition of sugar beets and fats, it was produced industrially on a larger scale starting in 1769.
A digression into brand history would be interesting here, but there is hardly room for it at this point. In any case, chicory coffee became known as "Prussian coffee" under slogans like "Healthy and rich without you" and "Germans drink German coffee and stay healthy." Over time, it found its way into people's habitual meal routines and replaced beer soup as a morning meal. This was only possible because, unlike real coffee, the surrogate was affordable for the common people.
Coffee substitutes become a habit
The taste of substitute coffee thus established itself in all households. As the production of real coffee then took on larger and larger dimensions, coffee prices also moved into more affordable depths. And over time, the amount of real coffee in the surrogate mixtures also grew.
Today, we can still consciously decide in favor of a surrogate. Many roasteries keep special blends available for customers. In coffee blends described as such, however, the surrogates should have disappeared. As a rule, they have. There are exceptions to the rule, too. And of course, not everything that glitters is gold, or whatever says "Krönung," "Premium," or "Specialty" on it. But more on that another time.
