How to Brew Civil War Coffee with Sweet Potatoes
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#tastinghistory #gettysburg #civilwar #coffee
CORRECTION: I misspoke and said Lee surrendered in 1863. It was, of course, April 1865. Mea culpa.
I have written about sweet potato coffee in my book. Thanks for doing a video on it.
I haven't been getting notifications for my favorite part of Tuesday for weeks! Glad TH-cam remembered to remind me of my favorite history content!! And thanks for it Mr Max!
Slip of the tongue. Happens to all of us. Doesn't diminish one bit from an interesting topic. I don't drink coffee, but it was still very interesting from a logistics point of view.
Amateur, forgot to roast it... in fact it tastes little different from real one. Mostly made from barley, rye, wheat, acorn etc
As a former Civil War reenactor I have made and distributed for coin or trade different coffee versions.
Here in Sweden, during WW1 and WW2, we were under rationing. Coffee was one of the foods severely rationed, so people made their own coffee substitutes using things like roasted dandelion roots and roasted acorns. Some people said it tasted better than real coffee, but I’m pretty sure they were just putting on a brave face.
Chicory is great, not bitter like coffee.
I used to go to a cafe in Melbourne, Australia that did a dandelion latte. It's still used as a caffeine-free "health food" coffee alternative.
I love that "putting on a brave face" is multicultural
Bad real coffee tastes like death.
So bad fake coffee probably tastes the same, if not a little better.
I mean.. yeah coffee *tastes* not very good... but... it's still awesome, and you can't really replicate it's effects with dandelions, afaik.
I love that he still uses that one clip of him clacking the hard tack together, even two years later. It cracks me up every single time.
Unlike the hard tack, not even chipped.
He actually changes back into that outfit and uses the same hard tack in a new shot every time.
When I was little my mum used to give us "kid's coffee" which was essentially toasted barley, ground up and brewed with milk and sugar. It had that same toasted flavor sans caffeine. I still make it from time to time and it brings back so many good memories
Postum?
I really like the barley tea from Japanese grocery stores. It's quite good as a cold tea brewed in the fridge for 2 hours. I may try it as a hot tea some time to see how it tastes but it comes in a larger bag for I think 2 quarts of water. Very good stuff though so go poking around for it if you like barley teas.
That actually sounds delightful, and a lot tastier than actual decaf coffee
Coffee Milk: A teaspoon of the adult at the table's coffee stirred into a child's cup of sweetened warm milk! It's a cup of "I'm all grown up now!" coffee 👦
Dude I just tried this ...holy phuck it was good ..peace out n good vibes
Quite nice of you to feed the local squirrel population. The fluffy ones are often overlooked.
Are they red or gray squirrels?
@@sandradermark8463 thought America had no red squirrels?
Maybe he should give them the hardtack, who will win? Squirrelteeth or hardtack? *clackclack*
Don't feed the squirrels hardtack though. They'll lose their teeth and then you'll be morally bound to feed them sweet potato tea for the rest of their little squirrely lives!
They ate plenty off my beautiful tomato plants...cute little rascals.
Not going to lie, the hardtack gag never fails to get a laugh out of me. Please keep finding an excuse to add it into videos! 🤣
Oh, I will 😂
I literally posted this exact comment while yours was still the top comment...and I completely missed it!
It's nice to find a fellow connoisseur of fine humor!
Hardtack always delivers!
oh how a few seconds clip has made a never ending surge of laughter....... Love it....
all of the hardtack references makes me want a hardtack compilation. *Clap Clap*!
In the Philippines, the poor farmers made "Rice coffee " since we have an abundance of rice. I was 10 years old when I first tried it, I accompanied my father visiting his classmate who was a farmer. It smelled divine! Nutty fragrance. It was served hot with milk from water Buffalo (Karabaw). I'll never forget how soothing it tasted. It's still made today and sold as Rice coffee.
I watched my mom (who's from Georgia) wage a 20 year battle trying to keep the squirrels away from the birdfeeder, so imagining Max chasing off squirrels from his historical-reenactment sweet potatoes and rye really makes me giggle.
😂 Same here! Your mom would likely appreciate the newer feeders that are treated to make them weather resistant and slick as Teflon! 😂 We have fun watching the young squirrels try and fail until they learn to just grab the seeds that are scattered in the grass. 😂😂
We have multiple bird feeders, and they have these cones you can put on the poles that will keep them from climbing up! They are clever little buggers though lol. We built a clubhouse for my son next to one of the bird feeders, and the squirrels started jumping onto them from the roof! 😅
Ha, ha! I want a video of Max's squirrels eating sweet potatoes.
In before the mark rober collab
In that case, she will enjoy the Squirrel Olympics videos that Mark Rober made. Those squirrels are definitely athletes.
I love it when the fan favorite character Hardtack makes an appearance, it's always such a joy.
Probably going through hard times as it's hard-pressed to find other gigs.
"clack clack!"
I had roasted barley tea for the first time recently when I visited Japan, and I was shocked by how similar it tasted to coffee! Like other commenters have said, maybe roasting the rye and sweet potatoes would lend a more coffee-like flavour.
barley tea tastes NOTHING like coffee. i know a place in atlanta called cherry blossom ( its a korean spot near GSU) that made barley tea. was it good? surprisingly yeah. was it coffee? god no. id call it cereal tea before i called it coffee
@@jujijuman Barley tea tastes *everything* like coffee beans. It doesn't taste like heavily carbonized coffee beans, but if you get some light roast coffee that's a little *too* light, it will taste remarkably like barley tea
AKA Starbucks coffee always tastes the same because everything that's burnt beyond recognition... well, tastes the same, and incidentally not so much like barley tea.
It’s relatively easy to make at home in the oven. Just follow similar instructions to roasting coffee. It’s a nice change from coffee coffee :)
Yeah, roasting he barley before making it into tea definitely gives it a coffee like taste. Spent three years in the Far East (Korea to be precise) and I've had roasted barley tea several times. Also just regular barley tea, which has a taste like dark bread, in my opinion. This has historically been a common type of "tea" used in the Far East to ensure that water was safe to drink after being boiled. It also helped soften the barley before they ground it mix it with rice to stretch out rice stocks, and was often an alternative when rice stocks ran low. It also boosted the nutritional value of the rice due to it not being only rice.
@@jgkitarel
Funny thing I was a bit broke and couldn’t afford coffee so I made American civil war dandelion coffee. Very bitter and astringent but gave me an idea. Yes I reinvented barley coffee, thinking I’d come up with a winner. Very rudimentary baked in the oven after researching coffee roasting. Then I googled it, yep the Italians have done it for centuries, it’s called Cafe D’orzo. My version is quite nice for a change, it doesn’t contain caffeine and has alleged health properties.
This one might merit a revisit; it looks like you have neglected to roast the rye or the sweet potatoes. The "parching" step in the rye recipe almost certainly refers to roasting the grains to darken them. The sweet potatoes very probably would have been roasted as well, in the same way dandelion and chicory roots were treated when making ersatz coffee. I think you would get a much more accurate and more coffee-like (though how much is debatable) result if you were to give that a try.
If it tastes better than dishwater, it's probably approximately representative of some such recipe that got popular somewhere... ;o)
I was wondering if they were supposed to be toasted too lol… I was just thinking about how distinct sweet potato and rye are in both taste and smell.
i thought the same thing considering a substitute i saw on the townsend channel roasted wheat berries and ground them for coffee
Yeah I don't think you can make any coffee substitute that even remotely resembles a taste of a coffee without roasting. Coffee it self is roasted so without this step you're just making a tea or a soup.
When I was a kid, my (Australian) family would go on holidays to vegetarian health retreat. They had a caffeine-free coffee alternative called Caro, which according to Wikipedia is a mixture of roasted barley, malted barley, chicory, and rye. I was too young to drink coffee at the time so I had no point of comparison. But I remember it being warm and comforting, and more substantial than a cup of tea.
We have it here in Europe, too ☺️ love Caro!
In the USA it's called Pero! I love this stuff.
I remember Caro! It tasted great but caused me serious headaches.
Barley+rye+(sometimes)corn+(sometimes)chicory (all roasted!) was the world war 2 and commie era coffee substitute back in commie times. Doesn't taste anything like coffee but it do be refreshing! I'd rather drink a slightly fermented malt/grain drink (similar to kvass), but grain coffee is a flavour of my childhood as well! Farmer family/10
PS You may wanna try dandelions roots, it's a very southern US thing but it supposedly has a much more similar flavour profile to actual v. dark roasted coffee (I tried, it doesn't, but people claim it does so maybe I'm wrong lol)
Oh, there's also a popular instant variety, it's an amazing summer drink as it gets really foamy when you stir the powder in, it's some unholy commie invention but god damn does it work well
nah. Never too young! Had my first cup of joe at age 4....with chocolate ice cream instead of milk and sugar! My uncle loves me.
I feel like in both recipes one thing that was lacking was actual roasting process - I assume that most of "real" coffee at that time came as raw grains so authors of both recipes did not included that step.
I think it's a valid possibility. Old recipes often assume you knew what to do with something, and leave out a lot of details.
@@cheutho There's no question about this, the recipe literally says 'parched'. Max just didn't follow the recipe.
It went into the oven until it was completely dry... which I believe counts as parched.
Like mix-and-match said, the thing is that he forgot that coffee in that era was usually green coffee that you roasted yourself before grinding, so anyone from the 1800's who was making a substitute coffee would likely have roasted whatever they were using before grinding and brewing, just like they would've with coffee.
@@cheutho The sweet potato coffee is sorta guilty of this, but the Rye coffee does says "ready for parching, to be used like the real Coffee Bean" so they didn't completely LEAVE OUT the roasting, they do imply "prepare this like you would coffee", but they weren't the most clear, probably since as you said they assumed it would be obvious to the reader since most people knew how to prepare coffee and how these recipes worked. To be fair to the sweet potato coffee, it was clearly written to make coffee go further, and as the recipe stands probably would've made a great half tea sweet potato flavored coffee, so they might not have intended it to be roasted at the time. Though people probably did fully brown the sweet potatoes later down the line to emulate the coffee taste, they might not have done it with this Rye mix, since the Rye would already be roasted to emulate the coffee, the sweet potato powder could've just been used as a flavorful supplement to dilute it/make it go further, or it could've been roasted to double down on the coffee taste. Who knows. lmao
Coffee was issued in a variety of ways:
Ground, roasted beans
Roasted, whole beans
Whole beans, in the green
You kind of never knew what you were gonna get, and many soldiers had to learn on the fly how to roast and grind coffee with whatever they had. I assume this step was left out as it wasn't always applicable, and it was something you did with your coffee anyway
-an american civil war reenactor :)
Finland had a shortage of coffee during and after WWI, WWII and the Winter War, and coffee was rationed for a long time. To a Finn, this is a horror, since Finland was and still is at the very top when it comes to coffee consumption per capita in the world. To supplement the meager amounts of real coffee, people added things like chicory root and dandelion root to it, or rye or barley. My own grandmother told me how she dug for dandelion roots to be used as coffee as a kid.
I've been looking to try dandelion coffee. It seems interesting
Yes but you had pervitine.
@@matthewwoods6501dandelion root “coffee” is not great (at least when I tried it) but dandelion flower tea is amazing.
One of the best stress relievers I’ve ever consumed.
My Mum spent a whole day going round the kitchen garden digging up every dandelion root she could find. Not easy work, the roots go down a long way, and they're tough. Then they needed scrubbing, cutting into short lengths, and finally roasting or rather baking in the oven, to dry them out and give them some colour. Then when they were dry as hardtack, but not burnt, just toasted, you could grind them up and brew them like coffee. I never tried it as I was only seven and had no truck with adult drinks like tea, yeuch, I thought coffee would be the same, even though it smelt far better.
@@lizlawley6680 You can do it by sticking a small stick or metal bar just beside the plant in the earth, and move it sideways a little. If you are careful, you can just pull out the plant with the root them. But the leaves will very easily rip off if you are to fast.
My grandmother used to tell me that during & after WW2, my great-grandmother sent her to pick dandelions, including the roots. She'd make the leaves into a salad or cook them as a substitute for spinach, and she'd chop up, dry and roast the roots and grind them into a substitute for coffee.
Oh interesting. I’ve heard of the leaves being used for salads and the flower part itself made into “honey”. But never heard of the roots being made into coffee!
That's still a thing in Europe. You usually mix the powder into real coffee to lower caffeine, or drink it on its own for caffeine-free coffee (beats decaf). Personally, I prefer date kernels, roasted and ground though. Those can pretty up cheap coffee too.
Great Depression cooking from around the world needs more videos! Was just reading up about how certain European nations dealt with their own economic rationing. Spoilers, it's really sad.
Chicory is also used as coffee substitute (even coming back a little bit in popularity)
@OnSquareOnLevel Reminds me of Sid from Ice Age eating a dandelion!
Fun fact, you can buy a rye-based coffee substitute in Germany. It's called "Caro Kaffe" It tastes similar to Coffe, it's a bit more sour and is Caffeine free. I used to love the stuff and would drink it with milk and sugar ☺
Me too, I loved it as a kid.
had that a few times in late 80s in berlin offered by ww2 survivors
I still drink Caro here in Australia!
Apparently it's sold as Pero in the US, probably since it would have been too similar to Karo.
Why bother when you can get Ovomaltine. Seriously 😂
Recently, I got from Cafe Du Monde a can of 100% Chicory, as I'm no longer allowed caffeine. I found the taste very acrid and sour, and I've needed to doctor it more heavily with milk and sugar than I would normal coffee. I much prefer the roasted barley tea bags I found at the Asian market. The taste is very similar to coffee, but smoother and slightly sweeter, and its not harsh on the stomach or guts like I've found coffee to be. Highly recommend the barley as a substitute if you don't care about the caffeine!
@Pammus_ You might seek out Postum - I've heard good things about it - though never tried it myself.
@@be6715 Thanks for the recommendation! Interesting history on it. I'll give it a go!
Very true about roasted barley tea, which is a popular drink with meals in the Far East aside from regular water as it dates from the days when reliably clean water was a pipe dream, so they would boil roasted barley in the water to not only make the water drinkable, but give it taste. This also helped prepare the barley to be mixed with rice, so as to stretch out rice supplies, if not outright replace it when the rice supply went out.
Maybe consider Crio Bru?
@@be6715 Postum is good but it reminds me more of cereal milk than anything.
Good, but not 1:1 ; toasted barley tea is closer in my experience
This is the only history content I can get my wife to watch with me. Books, documentaries, museums, etc all are like pulling teeth. The hardtack always gets a giggle out of her too
If a person doesn't giggle at the hardtack jokes at this point there's probably something wrong with them 😆
Theres a South Korean drink called a goguma latte, which is just sweet potato (but specifically the Japanese sweet potato, golden inside, purple outside, tastes like cake) roasted/steamed/whatever, and blended with milk and sweetener. Not coffee but this reminded me of it!
Ooh, I need to get me some Japanese sweet potatoes (if they have them) next time I go to the city.
I looooved this drink. I can't seem to find it in the US tho lol
@@odinfromcentr2doublecheck your potatoes before you buy, there's more than one kind of sweet potato grown in Japan. I think OP is talking about the Satsuma-imo (assuming the colors mentioned are the potato when cooked), but I could be wrong. Definitely not Okinawan sweet potatoes tho -- those are only purple on the inside (very vibrant when cooked, but look streakier when raw).
We have another project forr Max!
😂 I love that description “tastes like cake” so true too
In Java, Indonesia, tricky merchants would mix roasted dried corn and coffee, mill them together, and pass it on as coffee blend. They may did this because there were shortage, but they still do this now. Some people like it because it's not too strong, easy on the stomach, and easy for the heart.
My father told me of a coffee merchant in Surakarta Indonesia, whose blend he calls "goncang pikir". I asked whether it's so mindblowing, because goncang means shake and pikir means mind. He said, "Nah. It's short of jagung sekranjang kopi secangkir (a basket of corn, a cup of coffee beans)." 😂
As a long time Civil War living historian I really appreciate this episode. I've roasted my own beans on occasion and I've also made the sweet potato and acorn versions. In my professional opinion George Pickett was simply trying not to hurt his wife's feelings because these concoctions are NOT good!
Well, at least he seemed appreciative of the effort involved?
Was 'Bless your heart' meant literally back then? Because otherwise, he was pretty explicit about his feelings.
As a northerner that tried to be with a man from the south, I *hate* that phrase. Oh, I'm doing something you don't approve of? Obviously the quickest way to get me to change my behavior is with undetectable sarcasm... Best way to get me to do what you want must be to A) not say what I'm doing wrong and B) use a phrase that sounds nice-ish about what I did do.
A couple of years ago I was on a holiday camping in a forest. Having no acces to fresh ingredients we came up with the idea to make hot chocolate using coffee creamer and cocoa. Every night at camp I enjoyed it very much after a full day of hiking. But when I had been back home for a couple of days, I made it again and found it barely drinkable, although it was the same stuff. Moral of the story is that circumstance plays a role in taste perception I think.
@@online4christ660That’s a good point. Beggars can’t be choosers, especially when it comes to war rations. The smallest things that seem trivial or disgusting when safe and sound at home might seem like a real treasure when you aren’t.
During the Civil War, the Agar Gun (Basically a single barrel gatling gun) was nicknamed the "Coffee Mill Gun" because cranking the handle to fire the gun was a lot like cranking the handle on a coffee grinder. I also heard of a recipe for coffee substitute using roast peanuts, something the Confederate States would have in abundance
Roasted peanuts seems like they'd be pretty workable. Did people ever refer to the Gatling and other "manual machineguns" as coffee grinders given how they were operated by cranks as well?
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Not sure. I've only ever heard of the Agar Gun being called that. I think it might also have something to do with the shape of the hopper
Ager gun.
The grinder on the Sharps carbine was originally for grain. Lt. Col. Walter King, a soldier in the Missouri cavalry developed a grinding mill that could be incorporated into the buttstock of a Sharps carbine. Paperwork from the inspection board from King notates the use was for grain, though that never really came to fruition for several reasons. Adding the grinder compromised several functions of the rifle as well. Only about 100 were produced and only a dozen or so still exist.
Most of the so-called "coffee-grinder guns" were hand-cranked machine guns
It's good to know that the massive coffee addiction I had in the army as a warrant officer is actually part of a long and storied Army tradition.
As a current soldier my son is convinced I joined the Army to drink coffee; something he openly said to me.
When my father was in the British Army back in the sixties they mostly had tea as I understand it, at least that's how he recalls his experience at the mess hall were he always had a pint (imperial 568ml) of tea and enough breakfast both cereal and cooked to feed a small family.
I don't recall him mentioning coffee but tea definitely held the dominate part of his memory's of that time.
On my father's side, they claim that the only reason why we are coffee addicts is because at least one of us, in every generation since 1775, has served in the Army. I may be the last military-coffee drinker in the family.
@repentandbelieveinJesusChrist2 I am not the droid you are looking for. I'm less than 49% white, and my ancestors turned rude, pushy Christian missionaries, who we didn't invite to breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even dessert, into dead invaders and interesting fence decorations.
@@andybrooks7228considering the world-renowned English Breakfast…all i can say is i envy the english ability to make a decent brunch for a brekkie. Especially when pork ham and sausages aren’t exactly cheap in jakarta (only local producer worth a damn for western pork products is in Bali so it’s dirt cheap there)
Some oral history for you: maybe 40 years ago, my Grandmother (who was born in 1904) told me during the depression, people would make 'coffee' out of cereal grains. I can't remember which grain, but it may have been barley or perhaps wheat. She said it was roasted in the oven until it was as dark as coffee, and then ground up. I think it may be that the almost burnt taste of it would mimic the bitterness of real coffee. Back not that long ago, there were products like caf-lib and others which were just called cereal beverage which were marketed as 0 caffeine substitutes (maybe still available today), were made from barley. The look was identical to typical instant coffee.
In germany we still have Caro "coffee" made from barley, chicory, malt and rye. Often called childrens coffee. I use it in my bacon and beans receipe (and sometimes for nostalgias sake as breakfast coffee on sundays). WIkipedia tells me it is sold under the name pero in the US.
@@MakumbatorMormons in the USA drink chickory “coffee” because they avoid caffeine and alcohol due to religious prohibitions.
In the Philippines, there's rice coffee. You roast and toast the uncooked rice grains over the stove until they were very dark and that's what you boil to get the "coffee." It was a substitute for when there's no real coffee beans -- or instant coffee powder -- to be had.
@@MakumbatorYes! I think is the same brand as ee have in Spain, but here the name is Eko. I used to drink it when I was a child, I loved it but now I don’t like it at all😅😅. I’ll die for a good coffee now😝😝
@@Makumbator I have seen Pero but not tried it. I do have Roma I keep around. It has the same ingredients you listed for Caro. This Roma I bought in the US is made in Portugal. On the back of the bottle Kaffree Roma .. is made from roasted malted Barley with a touch of chicory and rye.
Another interesting historical note: Pickett is much maligned by his association with the last major action at Gettysburg, but the blame truly should fall on Lee and Lee alone. Longstreet protested the idea of the attack, as he had Lee's other fumbles during the battle, but Lee was still grieving the loss of Jackson after Chancellorsville and refused to listen to Longstreet.
It mainly became associated with Pickett because his division - which had not yet been involved in the fighting - was chosen to spearhead the assault. His troops made up only a third of the forces involved, but ended up receiving almost half of the casualties.
My late grandma would still buy chichory coffee way into the 1980's. Due to WWll, coffee here in Europe was pretty much unavaiable, and she got so used to it, that she continued blending it with normal coffee, until she could no longer care for herself. And yes, that particular brand exists to this day.
It's funny how chicory was a substitute but which people really ended up liking, so it stuck.
Yes. Can't make Vietnamese coffee without it! Tastes great. There's a can in my fridge now.
Chicory coffee IS very good.
"Fill it to the rim, with 'Brim'." Was their tagline and brand name
@@avnostlga I wasn't aware it's one of your national specialities. Guess, some lesser known things are popular, no matter where^^
i tried this recipe once! me and my dad made it for a history project in school and i brought in a jug of it for the class. safe to say i passed, but this is pretty close to what my dad and i did! only difference, we roasted it until it was dark in color based on a journal we found while researching it in the public library. either way, this is really accurate, love your channel, man! :)
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but you should trying making the burnt bread coffee they made on Navy ships when the coffee beans ran out.
In Natchitoches, Louisiana, there's a coffee shop that still makes all of these old coffee substitutes along with modern day specialty blends As a kid, I remember visiting there and my parents buying a bag of chicory and sassafras.
How long ago was that ? I think sassafras is now illegal, or at least heavily monitored.
Edit : Seems like it's just the oil.
"Safrole is a precursor for the clandestine manufacture of the drugs MDA and MDMA, and as such, sales and import of sassafras oil (as a safrole-containing mixture of above-threshold concentration) are heavily restricted in the US."
@@Gatorade69 it was like 10 years ago. 2011 ish. I just
Sassafras is good. I went with my parents to Arkansas in the early '60s and got some sassafras hard candy. Later you could buy Sassafras Bark Tea in health food stores. Sassafras is a key component in Sarsaparilla and real Root Beer. Hansen's Creamy Root Beer used to have real Sassafras in it, but it was altered to make it legal. The Gov't determined Sassafras was a carcinogen, but I believe a 50 lb sack of it fell off a shelf and killed a lab rat, and that scared them.
File gumbo powder has Sassafras in it.
For the rye recipe after the rye had been dried out, the newspaper mentions parching it. Parched corn is roasted corn kernels (think corn nuts) . So I imagine the intent was to toast the rye which would have made it darker in color and add some coffee like flavors.
I love that he just casually has hardtack. I need more people with hardtack in my life
the efford and creativity, people put in to making coffee substitutes in desperate times is phenomenal. there are hundreds of recepies from all over the world and times.
People will do anything to get a fix of their addiction, and caffeine addiction is no exception.
It makes me feel so connected to history, knowing that soldiers of the past still needed coffee as much as my soldiers and I did in the 2010s. Great episode!
Less so with hardtack tho I imagine 😆
I was always under the impression that regardless of the ingredient one still had to roast it before grinding it down. This is what gives it the color (and maybe the taste).
Most likely, but I wonder if the "secret ingredient" here weren't burnt ingredients from poor preparation. None of this stuff would taste like coffee, roasted or not, beyond the power of suggestion if it were roasted, darker and _looked_ more like coffee. But burnt coffee tastes much like a great many other things burnt.
Roasted grains in tea (most commonly buckwheat or barley) is common in Korea. Sweet potatoes are also common in beverages, especially in the winter.
Folks talking about using Dandelion root as coffee substitute, be advised that Dandelion root tea is a fairly powerful natural laxative. You've been warned. I imagine Max did not include it because he had visions of people posting "what have you done to me ?" on their phone from the restroom. That said, in the book "Hardtack and Coffee" there's a letter from a Union soldier who talks about having a quart of coffee at a time, and doing this sometimes three and four times per day. That's a lot of coffee.
As a native New Orleanian, I love my coffee and chicory!!! Which is difficult to find in Kansas, so thank goodness for the Internet. Each time I have a cup, it brings back memories of my grandparents and Saturday pancake breakfasts; especially when I add real sugar and PET evaporated milk to the coffee with chicory. Whenever I visit home, I stop as many times as possible to Cafe du Monde for beignets and a cafe au lait. 😊
I understand World Market carries cans of Cafe du Monde's coffee and chicory blend, and even box mixes of their beignets. Although after sampling the real thing in NOLA, I don't blame you for going back home to get it. 😊
I think they have chicory coffee in the New Orleans Square area of Disneyland here in Calif. I also think it’s the Cafe du Monde brand. I know they do sell delicious beignets.
Anyway, you might be able to get cans of New Orleans-style coffee on line.
@@jillparks, that is good news!
I grew up with drinking “coffee milk” made with fresh cow’s milk (the cream was skimmed off in the boiling and used to make fresh butter and J&B Coffee & Chicory (an old defunct NOLA Brand that came in big sealed cans. Afterwards the cans were saved to store nails, screws, and assorted small parts. J&B Coffee &Chicory was what we grew up drinking. (we grew up 50 miles up river from NOLA)
During WW I and WW II, Germany had difficulties to get coffee as well. My grandmother 👵told me that her parents and later she herself would roast barly and chicory root (cichorium intybus) at home . At first, the barly was soaked and prepared as if for malting . Then they would roast the ingredients in big pans on the stove, constantly stirrring it to avoid burning.
You could even buy such a substitue coffee (Ersatzkaffee) ☕ as a ready made mix under different brand names. This "Malzkaffe" aka "Muckefuck" coffee was still popular even in the 1960s, because it was considered cheaper and healthier. Both barley malt and chicory root are very beneficial for the gut biome, and supposedly help you deal with stress.
My parents kept the coffee for themselves, but they did let us kids have a cup of Postum if we wanted. The internet tells me that It's made from roasted wheat bran, wheat, and molasses. Good times! I haven't had a cup in years as I'm a big boy now and I drink coffee. I might have to see if I can find a jar of Postum for old times sake though!
I have wondered how similar the coffee substitutes would have been to Postum. When I was in third grade, I had a teacher who drank Postum every day lol.
It's strange that he didn't mention Postum. I used to drink a 1/2 coffee & 1/2 Postum concoction in an effort to stave off caffeine addiction.
Postum is popular with Mormons (who are forbidden to drink coffee or tea), so if there are Mormons in your community, there will be Postum in the grocery store.
Some Mormons even have a “Postum table” (identical to other people’s “coffee table.”)
Chicory coffee is still quite popular in France, both mixed with regular coffee (Chicorée-café) and pure (Chicorée). Most forms I've seen are either as an instant powder or some kind of thick syrup.
Chickory-root powder is still added to degree coffee in tamil nadu too
I don't drink coffee for reasons, but my family and I in the US drink Chicory coffee and I very much love it. I go 50/50 with chocolate for a dessert drink
I've not read all of the replies, but living close to the state of Kentucky there is a "Kentucky Coffee Bean Tree" that grows far and wide out side the state of Kentucky. The seeds in the pods are roasted & ground to make a beverage similar to coffee. I understand great use of it was made in the south during the civil war. Unroasted seeds are toxic & potentially dangerous but people have consumed the roasted & ground seeds as a coffee like beverage for many years.
Thank you for showing a lighter side of the Civil War. It always fascinates and inspires me how creative people will get to restore a bit of normalcy to their lives.
This was fascinating. Chicory was still very commonly used (usually mixed) well through the Great Depression, at least here in the Appalachians. My grandmother fooled my grandfather for years, I am told, by slowly introducing it in increasing quantities. And like you showed, you can still get it. I like it, myself. I have also drank "wheat coffee", which appears to be basically the same as your rye, but we roasted it prior to grinding. If you didn't roast it, it's bland. The sweet potatoes I'd bet could have been roasted a bit, too. But yes, I'm sure with most things, they were trying to just feel better and knew darn well it wasn't coffee. I would imagine that anything was better than plain water!
chicory coffee was not uncommon in pa dutch country in the 1960s mostly amoung depression survivors
Anything to add a pleasant enough flavor. How do you think tea got started and how there are still so many "teas" that are not made from tea leaves? Dates from the days when reliable access to clean water, or just wanting something that tasted different if the water WAS reliably clean. Just as a lot of thin broths were popular drinks in the Middle Ages, really.
As usual, your presentation is both entertaining and educational.
You should try the Dandelion root "coffee" it doesn't taste exactly like coffee, but it is probably MUCH closer than this. It is dark, it is bitter, and it has a slight caramel flavor. I recently tried making it, as I had a bumper crop of dandelion (and I don't use chemicals in my yard), and it is quite good as a non-caffeinated coffee alternative.
My wife and I dispute this. I aggressively try to eradicate dandelions to keep them out of the yard.
My wife treats them as a food crop… but with the kids we rarely have time for harvesting and prep.
@@Justanotherconsumer I am not a fan of the chemicals, and I figure if it is green, it is lawn. I am also looking into just replacing the grass entirely with local wildflowers and gardens. I am even thinking of having a bed of dandelion. I harvested mine this year by digging up the garden space where they had sprouted.
@@tomsadowski I've helped my mom with her garden at times, and this one tool which you use to grab dandelions by the root and yank them out of the ground with makes things a lot easier, but man, the things are just infinite.
We call dandelions "worm roses" in Sweden. Less appetizing name, maybe.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine I have heard of them being called "Wee-the-bed" because of their diuretic effect. Again, not so appetizing name. That said it is definitely a stronger diuretic than Coffee in my opinion! Great for if you are having edema or other swelling!
@@Justanotherconsumer I could recommend a video I saw about dandelions titled "DANDELIONS are the BEST INDICATORS of..." It gave me an appreciation for them and also some tips to manage them there
😂 I just imagined Max going into his yard fighting off Squirrels eating his rye and potatoes.
My grandfather always talked about using dandelion root as a great substitute for coffee when he was a boy during the great depression
Rye generally was quite common in coffee imitations. I remember coffee imitations from the days of WW2 were made with rye and chicory. But the grounds were roasted in the version I know of - not simply dried.
I'm from a military family, and both my daughter and son in law served, as well. Coffee is right up there with ice cream in terms of maintaining morale. In fact, in my family at any rate, coffee slightly squeaks ahead of ice cream. But just barely!
Coffee dissolved, poured over ice cream.
Chicory apparently grows wild here in Sweden, the Swedish name is Vägvårda, which basically translates to "to care for the road" or if you stretch it a little "Caretaker of the road".
I might actually try to get a hold of some root and mix with coffee to see how it tastes.
as a southern girl that lovers her coffee I love this episode I love your cookbook You have inspired me to write and publish my own cookbook thank you
Nice! What kind of cookbook?
@@kelirutledge8528 its all my favorites from when i was young and we lived all over the world
In the UK, people sometimes make dandelion coffee. You dig up the roots, wash them (thoroughly) and bake them, then grind into a powder. Tastes quite good, but not the same as coffee and takes a lot of digging to get enough roots.
Loved this episode! And in 1892, Americas most famous coffee, Maxwell House, grew from the Maxwell House hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. So fun watching and learning from you, Max! Thank you.
I still remember reading some Civil War fiction story for middle school, and a significant plot point was the rationing causing the mother's debilitating caffeine withdraws. Just because everyone drank so much of it.
In my 8th grade history class, wr had some sort of a practical unit that involved making foods that might have been eaten during the war. I made a world war one recipe for a cake that was sweetened with raisins.
That was "Across Five Aprils" by Irene Hunt - I think all of us of a certain generation read that one. I remember the mother having terrible headaches that only coffee could soothe. (Much later I learned about migraines and that caffeine is still used today in the medications that deal with them.)
Yes, that was in “Across Five Aprils.” We read it in eighth grade.
About the only place I can find Cafe du Monde in a store is at Asian grocery stores. I looked up why this might be and from what I can tell it goes back to the Vietnam War when Vietnamese refugees settled in New Orleans and found chicory coffee worked well as a substitute for coffee drinks popular in Vietnam.
Many supermarkets in Texas have Cafe du Monde brand coffee with chicory. But we’re close to Louisiana. Also, a lot of Vietnamese people live in Texas.
May our hearts garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.
When coffee was scarce, I used ground and roasted mesquite seeds as a substitute. My host family was impressed.
Neat, where was this?
Dominican 🇩🇴 88-91. It was pretty good actually.
Fun fact: George Pickett is a distant relative of mine. I believe he would be a distant cousin. Was not expecting a distant ancestor of mine be talked about in today's episode but I'm very happy to get to know more about my ancestor more especially what he ate/drink back in the civil war. 😊❤
Odious, racist relative claim to fame. Yeay!
During a hard time in my mother’s childhood grandma ground and roasted field corn. Mom said it didn’t really taste like coffee but was better than no coffee.
As a coffee lover, I understand the willingness to risk one’s life for coffee ❤😊
i wasnt surprised to hear the risky coffee runner was a 19 year old boy/man (depending on how you look at it) they'll risk their lives for almost nothing
As others have commented, it would be interesting to try this out after roasting the sweet potatoes and barley. But, sweet potato tea (as you prepared it) sounds lovely!
The hard tack clips always gets me 🤣😂😂.
Back when I was involved in Civil War reenacting I tried a number of ersatz coffee concoctions. A now departed friend of mine seemed to have a knack for historically accurate preparations. 15 years later and the woods still echo with the acclamations for Charles Heath’s ‘grey coffee’. Or maybe those are intestinal spasms. The two went hand in hand, as it were.
As usual, it was absolutely wonderful experience getting to watch a new Tasting History video while eating a meal and relaxing.
Does anyone else think it's odd that a channel devoted to primarily food/drink and history has managed to pull off one of arguable the most well done running gags in the world? The hardtack bit is one of the ONLY things in life that can make me audibly laugh anymore, even if it's typically just a mild guffaw.
In Denmark during the nazi occuoation, we also had chickory coffee as a substitute. These days you can find it along with dandelion root in the hippie health food stores.
I have been looking for some decaf options and came across a sattvic recipe for dry roasted chickpeas and those really smell very close to coffee!
I have seen *Rich´s Kaffeerstatning* in a museum shop. Maybe I should look in a health store too.
Another good Coffee & Chicory is Community brand New Orleans Blend. I find coffee & chicory smoother and less bitter, although a bit oilier than straight coffee. The popular phrase in New Orleans is to drink it "sweet as molasses and dark as midnight."
i still can't get over how i fell in love with your channel.
fell in love with history as i aged,
always loved cooking
but i never imagined someone would combine the two?!
your channel is easily my favorite find of the year!
I've a cookbook from the 1860s and there are a few coffee substitutes in there. Dyspeptic's Coffee was little more than hardtack browned extra dark, pulverized and steeped. There's also a recipe for "Coffee- More Healthy and Better Flavored" which is regular coffee and rye, in a 1:3 ratio. It does include a roasting/browning step that yours doesn't, so I'm thinking the articles left the roasting as almost a given.
The recipe says to 'parch', which is an old way of saying toast or lightly roast. Max seems to have, unusually, missed the step.
Im a bit late to the party but id like to share a tidbit of firearm history!
Soldiers most likely did use the grinder on the sharps as a coffee grinder, it wouldnt be the only time a feature on a gun was used by soldiers in an ununtended fashion. During the second world war Germany issued many of their soldiers a Kar98 and that specific rifle has a little metal notch on the stock used to field strip the bolt for cleaning. Many soldiers used this little notch as an ash tray!
Long winded comment i know lol
I always click on the video as soon as I get the notification, but even if I didn't, that title would've surely made me do it for this one because it is very intriguing. Always happy to learn more history, food and the history of food and you just have a wonderful way of transmitting the information
Yes I like the history as well
He has a nice voice it's not going to make me sleep plus it a food show as we'll.
There was something that was much more like Coffee around, but I don't think non-native peoples knew about it at the time. Yaupon Holly is North America's only native caffeinated plant species and contains around 60mg of caffeine per serving -- it grows from southern Virginia south to Florida and west to southeast Oklahoma and central Texas. It's more caffeinated than tea and when roasted it is somewhere in the tea-coffee continuum on taste. Way better than rye, I'd imagine, even roasted.
Yerba Mate' is popular in South America. It's a relative of the holly plant. Gauchos put the Yerba in a gourd, add boiling water, and drink it thru a special swizzle-straw that cools down the brew. Morning Thunder Tea is 1/2 Yerba Mate' and 1/2 black tea. The Mate' is high in caffeine.
This is the best video I’ve seen in a while. Always interested in the Civil War, so this was a most welcome lesson in my other favorite subject, “coffee”. Nicely done!
I always roll my eyes when I read people's comments that something or another had them bursting with laughter, but this episode was genuinely funny. The absurdity of people claiming they couldn't distinguish whatever their concoction was from real coffee and at the end when your sweet potato coffee tasted like, get this: sweet potatoes! 😂 Great episode!
Gotta say, I love the occasional appearance of the character Hard Tack. Always a source of humor. 😊
I make a coffee substitute with dandelion roots. You roast them in the oven,grind them and use them like coffee grounds. It taste the same as coffee. It’s the roasting process.
I got an old recipe from my family from the time period that was passed down...it was called double rations....a tongue in cheek kinda joke.
To make it you peel and slice thin 2 medium sweet potatoes, 1 cup of good rye flour, 8 cups of water, plus whatever you had for a sweetner. You boil the potatoes until soft and cooked. These were boiled until death mostly a full 30 minute boil. Once they gave up their flavor they were removed and set aside. To the liquid in the pot rye flour (course ground) was added little at a time and whisked to prevent clumping. After the flour was added it would be boiled another 20 to 30 minutes depending how strong you like your coffee. The coffee was sweetened to taste if you had anything to sweeten it with. It was then filtered through canvas or other canvas like material to get out the coarse ground rye. The filtered rye grits were mixed with the sweet potato mash. To which eggs and onions are added and maybe a bit of corn meal or flour and spices to make almost like a hoe cake that was cooked again in a hot frying pan.
This hoe cake like creation and coffee was breakfast and why it was called a double ration....
I was waiting for the hard tack knocking and you expertly did the glass and then the knock. Well. Done.
I actually live near a Cafe that sells 'Sweet Potato Latte'. It doesn't even NEED Sugar or fatty milk to sweeten it as the Potatoes does all the sweetening it self.
Its also pretty savory.
There really should be places that serve the different kinds of Lincoln Coffee just as there are tea shops & cafés, not just chicory coffee (which is delicious in its own right). Maybe a place in the Southeast or Midwestern parts can be a starting point, especially to work alongside the actual coffee drinks (sweet & savory)
Love the Regieleki in the background
Here in the Philippines we also have coffee alternatives, despite coffee grows well in the country... We have those made with roasted rice or corn... They roast those first, then grind it when its toasty enough like coffee beans.. then they put it in a pouch made of cheese cloth and let it boil in a pot of water..
Here in New Zealand, what you showed as sweet potato or yams we call kumara, specifically orange kumara. It makes very good soup and is lovely roasted, but I have never heard of it being made into coffee. ☕ Yams are another vegetable entirely and I cannot cook them properly to save myself 🙄
Squirrels: ooh, sweet potato (or yams). Meals on wheels. Very kind of Max.🐿
Max: 😳🙄
Hi Max, another caffeinated substitute with tons of historical value you may like is Yaupon! It's a holly that grows all through the south, naturally contains caffeine, and has been used as a tea since pre-Columbian times.
At various rough points in American history like the civil war and the Depression, people would use it as a substitute for regular, imported tea. I think you could get it online, or maybe mailed by someone who lives in the plant's range
Yep, but there’s a reason it’s botanical name is Ilex vomitoria
The hardtack at the end was hilarious! Holding the thinner end & attempting to dunk the wider end, & only getting a wee corner. Great video.
During and after the second World War in Germany, my grandma told me, they drank coffee made of acorns and even made sausage from it, they also had coffee made of chicory and malt called "Muckefuck" which she quite liked and drank even decades later.
Ersatz coffee, they called it.
@@Joze1090 Ersatz Kaffee just means replacement coffee, Muckefuck really was the more colloquial term.
I grew up on Muckefuck. My grandma always made a big pot of it and we drank it all day. Kinda miss that
@@SpiritofRavens I think I'll buy some for nostalgia if I can find it.
Ah, I've had chicory coffee. It's good!
Loving the authentic 1860s narration voice when reading the letter and articles. 🙂
Another fun coffee substitute is dandelion root.
But let’s face it- us sailors and soldiers will eat and drink just about anything. 🤣
“They say that in the Navy, the’s coffee’s mighty fine. It looks like muddy water, and tastes like turpentine.”
Would it help to roast and darken the sweet potato before grinding?
God that hardtack bit is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The expression on your face, the sound, just chef's kiss.
I am excited to learn about sweet potato coffee, my grandmother told me her mother used to make coffee with sweet potato but she could not remember how.
I love the fact that you still have some hard tack in the house even after so long. I suppose if the zombie hoards start rising up you have the start of your end of the world rations.
Wonderful video as always, keep up the fantastic work!
I'm certain he keeps resupplying himself. Once you've had the tack, you don't go back.
@@brianwelch1579 He protecc, he attack, but most of all-
He go CLACK-CLACK
@@alisaurus4224I never liked that meme, but this actually made me laugh.
Your quality of research is ummatched!! I love your passion and dedication to educate people while also giving us a taste (pun intended) of what it was like to live in those times
Courage is not the absence of fear, but simply moving on with dignity despite that fear.
Sounds like it might be time for a squirrel recipe 😀
😂
Haha! My dad would get so mad at the squirrels he'd go out in the yard with his rifle and come back in and cook them up with bacon grease. Ahh, growing up in the south 😆
I love sweet potatoes. I love Rye. I love coffee. Alright, I'll give it a shot!
BTW - I just wanted to let you know, Tasting History is my absolute favorite cooking series on TH-cam, and my favorite History series. Just amazing stuff, Max, and thank you!
we need an update! did you end up making it? Even though Max reviewed it, I'm curious!
@@GreatCdn59 I did end up making it! And it tastes, to paraphrase the late great Douglas Adams, almost, but not quite, exactly unlike coffee.
I just couldn't get into it. Coffee is a lot easier, and while this was an interesting experiment, much like roasted soybean "coffee substitute". it's not for me.
I think I might try this myself. Honestly would be delicious with cream and sugar.
Everything is delicious with cream and sugar 😆
@@TastingHistory It looks like it would make a wonderful tea..... A little sugar for sweetening too..
this guy has such a pleasant personality that adds extra touch to his videos
Sweet potato coffee
Surely that's a Starbuck vibe waiting to happen!
Late summer recovery? With sprinkles?
Better than the Oleo coffee they came out with. Too greasy.
@@TastingHistory Ooo that's a burn. Fair! 😅
How about sweet potato with pumpkin spice
@@slwrabbits Order up! Honestly, it would be awesome
Growing up in the Soviet Union, I remember drinking rye 'coffee'. It was OK if you add enough milk and sugar to it, but it still didn't taste lake an actual coffee. USSR was so poor that we also had chicory and acorn coffee drinks. The chicory one was better than the rye, but I don't remember how the acorn 'coffee' tasted like. To make a chicory coffee drink you need to dry and roast the roots, grind them and brew like you would make a real coffee.