Food Timeline FAQs: beverages.

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joel

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https://www.foodtimeline.org/foodbeverages.html19th century American beverages
What types of beverages were readily available to Early Americans?
Non-Alcoholic (Hot): Coffee & coffee substitutes, Cream Coffee (whipped cream), Chocolate (made with scraped, unsweetened chocolate)& Cocoa
Tea

Non-Alcoholic (Cold): Iced coffee, Iced tea (with or without lemon), Lemonade, cider, Raspberry Vinegar
Switchel, Carbonated water (soda water, with or without flavored syrups) & Mineral water.

Alcoholic: Distilled spirits: rum, whiskey, gin, bourbon, rye
Fortified wines: black currant, blackberry, currant, grape, gooseberry
Brandies: blackberry, cherry, Punch: claret, champagne, egg nog, sack posset & shrub.

Small & large beer: ginger ale, ginger pop, spruce beer, mead (honey beer).
Sources:

  • Jennie June's American Cookery Book [1870]: Tea, Coffee, etc. & Wines & Drinks
  • Buckeye Cookery Book [1877] :Drinks
  • Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and History in Virginia City/Kelly J. Dixon
  • Early American Beverages, John Hull Brown [Bonanza Books:New York] 1966



Beef tea
What is beef tea?

A concentrated protein beverage extracted from the essence of beef used to restore human health from the 18th century forwards. Early recipes provided instructions using real beef. Variations permitted other animal proteins (veal, lamb, chicken) and occasionally included vegetables. Florence Nightengale used beef tea to restore fallen Crimean War soldiers. American Civil War soldiers were likewise treated. In the 1880s commercial beef extracts were employed to make a quick beef tea. Some concoctions proved more healthful than others. A survey of late 19th/early 20th century USA newspapers and cook books confirm the popularity of homemade beef tea for the general malaise called "what ails you."
What were the healthful properties of beef tea?

I could have broken this up into about ten threads, but if you scan over the text, you will find what you need.
Of Course, you have the right to make a thread on any part of this text that you feel needs it on spotlight.
 
While not have followed all the links, I have mint and catmint patches, and a family tradition of the distillation of spirits and making wine. The cats and I do enjoy a bit of catmint tea in the evening:coffee:. Briggs keeps stealing my teabag :p
 
Unsolicited, but here is Briggs, looking completely innocent and incapable of any mischief.

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