Quote:
Originally Posted by Fordim
So called replacement "coffees" were only invented in WWII when the real thing became scarce -- so when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit in the 30s, coffee meant, well, coffee.
|
I'm sorry dear, but I'm afraid that isn't true. Chicory has been used as a replacement for coffee since the Middle Ages (see quote below). It was commonly used on the American prairie, and my great-grandparents drank it during the depression.
As for tea, I do not understand the general disdain for alternative teas. Chamomile, Sassafras, any of a million plants produce delightful teas, and I don't see that hobbits would be so far above availing themselves of them.
And lastly, to sugar. I agree that cane sugar would be an extremely difficult thing for hobbits to procure, short of Bethberry's trade scenario. But Tolkien was a philologist, not a horticulturalist. Sugar beets had been developed in Europe a hundred years and more before our hero's birth: they would have been a source of sugar Tolkien would have been familiar and comfortable with. I don't think its reasonable to assume that hobbits could not have grown them.