"Hot Liquid Pleasure" (The History of Tea, Coffe & Chocolate)
March 2004 Meeting Report
Guest Speaker - Carol Allison
Yet another full house was present for the March 2004 meeting of The Keyworth & District Local History Society The meeting began by conducting the business of the 2004 Annual General Meeting. The new Officers duly elected and other sundry reports and items of business being completed satisfactorily the one of the Society’s members, Carole Allinson, gave a talk on Hot Liquid Pleasure. The history of tea, coffee, and chocolate, as drinking beverages had its beginnings in the 17th century. These were not the first hot drinks to be enjoyed by the populace in general. Other concoctions pre-date all three, some of which were quite exotic. One such drink was called a possett. This consisted of a combination of cream and / or milk with ale and / or wine. The staple drink for the masses tended to be weak ale, the wealthier classes drank porter or wine. Some spirits were quite common too, gin being probably the most popular.
Tea, coffee and chocolate all arrived in this country within a few years of each other. The Age of Exploration was largely responsible for a great many new items of food and drink being discovered and introduced to a very receptive market. Tea was introduced to England via the Dutch, chocolate came by way of Spain and coffee from Turkey. All of the drinks were very bitter in taste by today’s standards. The introduction of sugar from the West Indies in the 1640’s helped to make the drinks more palatable. One thing that all three of the beverages had in common though was that they were all originally very expensive. Tea, for instance, originally cost £3/10/-, per 1lb, a very substantial amount in the mid 1600’s. All three beverages were certainly outside the budget of the ordinary working classes. Then, as now, the Treasury were quick to take advantage of these new products and it was not very long before they were being taxed to a greater and greater extent, (some things don’t change at all!!). This excessive taxation though had a sting in its tail inasmuch as it encouraged smuggling on a grand scale. As the popularity of the drinks increased so did the amount that was smuggled. It wasn’t until import duties were drastically reduced in 1784 that smuggling ceased to be a major problem.
It seems odd now, given that it is such an integral part of the British way of life, but tea was a very controversial beverage when it was first introduced into this country. Samuel Pepys was one of the first to record the new drink and was favourably impressed. However that stalwart of Methodism, John Wesley, stated in 1748 that tea was very bad for you. His claim that tea brought you “Near to the Chamber of Death” seems risible today but his was only one of many voices denouncing the new drink. William Cobbett declared that tea drinking was to be avoided and that tea itself was good for nothing. All manner of maladies and ailments were said to be caused by the habit of tea drinking. These ranged from hot and cold flushes, through attacks of shivering to impotence. One wonders how the product managed to gain such a hold in this country given the hostile press that it received. Perhaps it has something to do with the perverse psyche that thinks if a thing is bad for you it must, per se, be enjoyable.
However, all three of the new beverages gained a foothold in the country and with them came the birth of many new utensils with which to prepare, brew and drink the liquids. The birth of the Industrial Revolution meant that new industries mass-producing the metal, pottery and porcelain utensils for these drinks found a vast, untapped, and very profitable ready market for their wares. One oddity of the new drinks was how their popularity seemed to be divided between the sexes. Tea was essentially a “woman’s” thing, afternoon tea parties being all the rage at one time; whist coffee was a “man” thing. To cater for these new trends Coffee Shops, with their almost exclusively male clientele and tea gardens with their almost exclusively female clientele became very popular. The very first coffee house was opened, not in London as might be supposed, but in Oxford at the Angel Inn. Dishes of coffee could be purchased for 1d or 2d and the daily newspapers were available for reading. They became meeting places for the transaction of business and debating rooms. In fact, coffee shops were the forerunners of the later “Gentleman’s’ Clubs”. Originally the coffee was served black but later additives such as honey, spices, cinnamon, and cloves were added. Later still milk and cream were added. Coffee, like tea, attracted adverse publicity from the female sex when it became popular with the male sex. Allegations of “Grand inconvenience to their sex from the excessive use of that drying and enfeebling liquor” were commonly made.
The chocolate drinks of today bear no resemblance whatsoever to the drink as it was originally introduced into this country. The Spanish discovered chocolate when they invaded Mexico. It was a favourite of the Aztecs and had a very bitter taste. One thing, which hasn’t changed over the years, though is the desire for the drink to be presented with a very frothy texture. Even 300 years ago there were devices and implements available to make the chocolate frothy. Chocolate never attained the same universal popularity as a drink compared with tea or coffee and this must have been due in large part to its cost, which was significantly more than either of its rivals. More of the raw product was required to make a drink from it than either tea or coffee. The chocolate was ground from coffee beans before it was imported to this country. It’s greatest market was with the upper, and consequently wealthier classes. However, today, chocolate in its eating form is a massive multi-million pound industry. Chocolate also seems to have attracted the philanthropodists of the day, names such as Rowntree and Cadbury being synonymous with both the product itself and more enlightened industrial practices and worker welfare.
When the presentation was over the audience were invited to sample some concoctions of chocolate in its early guises. The talk was educational, informative and interesting and was very well received by an appreciative audience.