Episode Details

Whenever coffee supplies collapse, people roast whatever they can find. After Napoleon's Continental Blockade of 1806 cut France off from imports, the French turned to roasted chicory root. During the American Civil War, the Union blockade left Southerners brewing rye, okra seeds, and chopped sweet potatoes, and in 1865 the Southern Banner admitted the goal was cheating the palate if we cannot deceive the nerves. In World War II Americans drank Postum, made from roasted wheat bran and molasses.

Economics forced the same tricks in the Eastern bloc. In the late 1970s East Germany introduced Kaffee-Mix, 51 percent coffee cut with roasted rye, sugar beet, and peas, while Ceaușescu's Romania sold a blend nicknamed for its fitness for horses. Religious abstainers in the LDS and Seventh Day Adventist churches use roasted drinks to keep the social ritual, and some substitutes, like chicory in New Orleans, became loved in their own right. The newest wave comes from the lab: Atomo's 2019 molecular coffee from upcycled seeds and husks, and 2021's cell grown coffee from a bioreactor.

• Roasting chicory, chickpeas, or asparagus seeds triggers the Maillard reaction, producing melanoidins and roast aromas without any caffeine.
• Recorded stand ins include dandelion root in the 1830s, roasted chickpeas in 1793 Germany, persimmon seeds, and carbonized molasses.
• Yaupon holly, brewed by Indigenous peoples of the Southeast as the black drink, is a native North American plant that actually contains caffeine.
• Colonists called yaupon cassina and dropped it as a poor man's drink once cheap coffee returned.
• Camp Coffee has been sold in the UK since 1876, and Nestlé's Ricoré chicory drink dates to the 1950s.