Notes & Queries 1849.12.22
_Coffee, the Lacedaemonion Black Broth._ Your "notes on Coffee" in No. 2. reminded me that I had read in some modern author a happy conjecture that "coffee" was the principal ingredient of the celebrated "Lacedaemonian black broth," but as I did not "make a note of it" at the time, and cannot recollect the writer from whom I derived this very probable idea, I may perhaps be allowed to "make a query" of his name and work. R.O.
Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849
_Coffee, the Lacedaemonian Black Broth._--Your correspondent "R.O." inquires what modern author suggests the probability of coffee being the black broth of the Lacedaemonians? The suggestion, I think, originated with George Sandys, the translator of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. Sandys travelled in the Turkish empire in 1610. He first published his _Notes_ in 1615. The following is from the 6th edit. 1652, p. 52.:-- "Although they be destitute of taverns, yet have they their coffa-houses, which something resemble them. Their sit they, chatting most of the day, and sip of a drink called coffa (of the berry that it is made of), in little _China_ dishes, as hot as they can suffer it; black as soot, and tasting not much unlike it (why not that black broth which was in use among the Lacedaemonians?) which helpeth, as they say, digestion, and procureth alacrity," &c. Burton also (_Anatomy of Melancholy_) describes it as "like that black drink which was in use among the Lacedaemonians, and perhaps the same." E.B. PRICE.
(follow the rest of the discussion at Rogueclassicism)
No doubt this is all just a tempest in a teapot -- or coffeepot, if you will -- but it's an amusing thought nonetheless. Give me four shots of espresso in the morning and I feel like I can conquer a million Persians myself!
"I... NEED... COFFEE!"
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