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What people drank, and why
The history behind the drinks, told from the period books, with recipes to make at the end.
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79 stories
Nelson’s Body and the Brandy Cask
Yes, in brandy, then brandy and spirit of wine, by the surgeon’s own account of 1807. The sailors who drank the cask dry belong to a later tale.
2 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did Babylonian Beer Taste Like?
Nobody knows how Babylonian beer tasted, or even how strong it was. A hymn, a brewery ledger, a cooking tablet and a test brew tell what we do know.
3 recipes · 2 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did Medieval Children Drink?
Milk from a mother or a nurse first, then beer, milk and water, depending on age and household. What the medieval and Tudor sources say, and what they don’t.
3 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
Lemonade, Rice Water and a Better Teapot: Soyer at Scutari
In the Scutari hospitals of 1855, sick soldiers drank tea, rice water, barley water and lemonade, many made to recipes by the chef Alexis Soyer.
3 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
28,000 Gallons of Ale, 72,000 of Lemonade: The King’s Dinner of 1902
At the King’s Dinner of 1902, half a million Londoners drank ale or temperance cordials, and lemonade and soft drinks outpoured the ale over two to one.
4 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
Hootch, 50-Cent Coffee and $40 Champagne: Drinking in the Klondike
Klondike gold rushers drank coffee, tea and cocoa at gold-rush prices, watered whiskey, and hootch from a still made of coal-oil cans.
2 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
Hollywood Cocktails, 1933: Old Recipes at Star Addresses
The Brown Derby of whisky, grapefruit and honey was printed in Hollywood Cocktails as repeal came in 1933. The Savoy had printed it in 1930 as the De Rigueur.
3 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
How Was Beer Doctored?
Regency brewers swapped hops for bitter wood and bought poisonous berries, publicans faked a head with green vitriol, and Dutch books put blue vitriol in beer.
2 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
The International Bar Flies of Harry’s New York Bar
The International Bar Flies was a mock drinking club founded at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris about Christmas 1924. A 1927 book printed its rules and drinks.
4 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
1920s Mocktails From a London Bar Book
In 1922 a London bartender gave a chapter of his cocktail book to non-alcoholic cocktails, and named one for the most famous dry campaigner of the day.
8 recipes · 7 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did Havana’s Cocktail King Pour in the 1930s?
Frozen daiquiris made on a milkshake mixer, a rum and vermouth Presidente and drinks named for people: what Havana’s Bar La Florida printed in 1939.
8 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
The Lead Shot in the Madeira Bottle
Wine bottles were scoured with lead shot. In 1819 a magazine warned that pellets stuck in the base could taint the next wine, and told of a bottle of Madeira.
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A Short History of Hot Chocolate
Hot chocolate reached England in the 1650s already sweet, made with water or milk and egg yolks. By 1886 it was a cheap powdered cocoa at under a cent a cup.
4 recipes · 4 alcohol-freeRead the story
How Old Is the Old Fashioned?
The drink goes back to 1806, but the name is from the 1880s, when drinkers wanted a plain cocktail among new ones. The earliest recipe by name we found: 1888.
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What Did People Drink Before Coffee and Tea?
Before coffee and tea reached England in the 1650s, the first drink of the day was ale or beer, and wine in great houses: the morning draught.
5 recipes · 2 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did People Drink in New France?
Watered claret, spruce beer and chocolate in French Canada; cassava beer, cane spirit and English-style sangaree in the French islands of the Caribbean.
4 recipes · 2 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did People Drink in New Netherland?
Beer first, strong or small, brewed in the colony and taxed by the barrel; wine and brandy by ship; and by 1679 Barbados rum the Dutch called kill-devil.
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What Did People Drink in Old Singapore?
Coffee at four cents a cup over condensed milk, the gin sling at the clubs long before the Raffles legend, and barley water from Government House.
4 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did the Founding Fathers Drink?
Madeira, claret, punch, porter, cider and small beer: what the founders really drank, from Washington’s 1757 beer recipe to a 1787 Philadelphia tavern bill.
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A Short History of Lemonade
Paris had a lemonade sellers’ guild by 1676. Britain cleared its lemonade with milk, America made it fizzy, and pink lemonade was sold at Gettysburg in 1865.
12 recipes · 12 alcohol-freeRead the story
The Stone Soda Works of Hangtown
Gold Rush miners bought soda water too. In Placerville, once called Hangtown, a stone soda works of about 1853 still stands on Main Street.
3 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
Martinmas, When the New Wine Was Tasted
On St Martin’s Eve households ate goose and drank the foaming new must, believed to become wine overnight; the next day the year’s new wine was tasted.
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A Temperance Thanksgiving: Cider, Currant Wine and Ginger Beer
Sarah Josepha Hale, who campaigned for the national holiday, set its table with currant wine, cider and ginger beer, and no foreign wines or spirits.
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What Did People Drink on Bonfire Night?
Old accounts of November 5 describe guys, squibs, bonfires and Yorkshire parkin by 1835, but none we found says what was in the cup. Here is what fits.
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What Did People Drink on the Titanic?
Tea and coffee in all three classes, wine in first, Munich lager at lunch and a half-frozen Punch Romaine at dinner: what the Titanic poured in April 1912.
4 recipes · 4 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did Pirates Drink?
Buccaneers drank brandy by the cask and rum punch at the salt ponds, Blackbeard’s crew grew restless without rum, and Bartholomew Roberts drank tea.
3 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did Scots Drink on St Andrew’s Day?
Haggis and sheep’s-head broth on the table, whisky toddy from the punch bowl afterwards, and by 1863 a St Andrew’s ball with no wine, spirits or beer.
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What Was Koumiss?
Koumiss was the fermented mare’s milk of the steppe. Victorian doctors prescribed it by the bottle, made it from cow’s milk and argued over the name.
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What Was Valley Tan?
Valley Tan was the Salt Lake Valley’s word for anything homemade, above all its raw wheat whiskey, praised by Richard Burton and mocked by Mark Twain.
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A History of Kiddie Cocktails
From weak negus at Victorian parties to cambric tea, red grenadine punch and the Shirley Temple: what children were given to drink beside the grown-ups.
5 recipes · 5 alcohol-freeRead the story
How America Learned to Drink Its Tea Cold
Iced tea was an ordinary American drink by the late 1860s, in print from 1876, and decades older than the 1904 World’s Fair story. Ice came first.
3 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
Apples, Ale and Nuts: The Old Drinks of Halloween
Roasted apples bruised into ale or milk in Ireland, nuts and ale on Nutcrack Night, a dram with sowens in Scotland, sweet cider at a 1903 American party.
4 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
Forgotten Drinks Worth Making Again
Forgotten drinks people once had every day, with and without alcohol: switchel, posset, negus, saloop, shrub, spruce beer, hippocras, mulsum and the egg cream.
11 recipes · 6 alcohol-freeRead the story
How Poland Made Vodka
Distillers’ manuals, a Warsaw housewife’s liqueurs, and a town’s drink-tax auction: how Poland made vodka, and why the famous date of 1405 is about a pond.
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No Rounds Allowed: The Wartime Treating Orders of 1915
From 1915, in much of wartime Britain, buying someone else a drink in a pub was an offense, even for your own wife. A cup of tea stayed legal.
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Mary Rose, Red Hammer and a Raw Egg: The Bloody Mary’s Other Names
Before Bloody Mary stuck, vodka and tomato had other names: Havana’s Mary Rose in 1939 and Hollywood’s Red Hammer in 1942, with the Prairie Oyster behind them.
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The Grocer Called Baker: An 1898 Cocoa Lawsuit
A New York grocer named Baker sold repacked chocolate and cocoa as “W. P. Baker’s.” In 1898 a court let him keep his name, not the words shoppers asked for.
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Half the Grog and a Pint of Tea: The Navy in 1824
In July 1824 the Admiralty halved the spirits a Navy sailor got in place of beer, to a quarter-pint a day, and added an evening pint of tea or coffee.
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A Pint of Stout on Christmas Day: What the Victorian Poor Drank
A pint of beer or stout with the workhouse Christmas dinner, hot elder wine in the street, tea for the teetotal: what the Victorian poor drank at Christmas.
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The Bloody Mary Before It Had a Name
Beef tea with a shot of sherry, clam broth with catsup, oysters seasoned like a Bloody Mary, and gin with tomato juice in 1929: the drinks before the name.
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Cocktails in 1920s London and Paris
Sidecars, Monkey Glands, Gimlets and a White Lady without gin: what the bar books of London and Paris printed while America was dry, and who got the credit.
16 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
The Wine List at Willard’s Hotel
Champagne at $3, claret by the quart or pint, a dollar for corkage and wine cards with pencils: Willard’s Hotel wine list, its 1864 dinner and Lincoln’s bill.
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The Bartenders Who Wrote Down the Classic Cocktails
Working bartenders, starting with Jerry Thomas in 1862: the Manhattan, Martinez and dry Martini came from bar books, the 1940s vodka classics from newspapers.
15 recipes · 2 alcohol-freeRead the story
A Coffee Row at a 1912 Diplomatic Dinner
Sherry, Roederer 1904 and coffee at the Waldorf Astoria in May 1912, and the Brazilian ambassador who used it to protest a US suit over São Paulo coffee.
2 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
Why Did Egil’s Daughter Give Him Milk?
In Egil’s Saga, Thorgerd tricks her grieving father into drinking milk, breaking his fast so he lives to make a poem for his drowned son. What the saga says.
3 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did Early Americans Drink at Harvest?
Switchel in the July hayfield, molasses and water pushed as a cure for harvest rum, then cider in the fall: sweet when fresh, hard once it worked.
5 recipes · 4 alcohol-freeRead the story
Did Root Beer Have Alcohol in It?
Home-brewed root beer did, up to 1.77 per cent in a 1916 pharmacist’s test; the soda-fountain kind, syrup and soda water, held hardly a trace.
3 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
Alcohol-Free Drinks Through History
Posca, whey, barley water, orgeat, switchel, penny cocoa and soda fountain drinks: what people drank without alcohol, era by era, and which held a little.
35 recipes · 35 alcohol-freeRead the story
From Punch Bowl to Shaker: How Rum Got Into Cocktails
Rum came to the cocktail by way of punch: the 1878 Jamaica rhyme, the Cuban Daiquiri, Havana in the dry years, and the Mai Tai of the 1940s tiki bars.
4 recipes · 1 alcohol-freeRead the story
How Was Eggnog First Made?
Beaten yolks, milk, sugar, rum or brandy and nutmeg, mixed cold in a bowl: the first printed eggnogs (1837, 1839) and how Jerry Thomas made it one shaken glass.
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Was the Soda Fountain a Pharmacy?
Partly: soda water began as imitation spring water, and an 1897 manual kept headache salts and castor oil at the fountain, which also turned a good profit.
7 recipes · 7 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did People Drink in an Edwardian Country House?
Sherry and champagne at dinner, claret cup at tennis teas, lemon squash and barley water, and beer or beer money downstairs: the Edwardian country house.
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What Did People Drink in a Wild West Saloon?
Whiskey at two bits a glass, lager near a brewery, bitters, champagne after a strike and black coffee on the trail: what the frontier drank, 1849 to 1900.
7 recipes · 4 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did People Drink in the Regency?
Tea, lemonade and orgeat at Almack’s, wine and negus at private balls, brandy ratafia in the cookbooks and fake tea in the pot: what Regency Britain drank.
6 recipes · 5 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did the Pilgrims Drink?
Beer from England and a bottle of strong water on the Mayflower, then New England spring water ashore. No record says what was drunk at the 1621 harvest feast.
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What Did the Vikings Drink?
Ale at every feast, mead for gods and poets, wine for the rich, and milk, curds and sour whey at home. Plus where the skull cups really came from.
5 recipes · 3 alcohol-freeRead the story
Victorian Christmas Drinks, from Punch to Elder Wine
Hot punch, mulled claret, elder wine with toast, negus for the children and tea for teetotalers: what Victorians drank at Christmas, with three recipes.
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Shrub: One Name, Two Very Different Drinks
One name, two drinks: an English brandy, citrus and sugar cordial by 1739, and the American raspberry vinegar for iced water, a temperance drink by the 1840s.
6 recipes · 5 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Was a Tomato Juice Cocktail?
A small glass of chilled, seasoned tomato juice served as the first course, with no spirit in it: the Depression’s new appetizer, sold by the USDA on the radio.
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What Was Aqua Vitae?
Distilled spirit sold as medicine: what Gessner’s 1559 handbook and Markham’s 1623 manual say aqua vitae was made from, how strong it was and how it was tested.
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What Was Champagne Cider?
Bottled sparkling cider sold as cheap champagne: how 1860s recipes made it fizz, what a USDA chemist found in the bottles, and an alcohol-free glass to make.
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How Milk Made Franklin’s Punch Clear
Brandy, lemon and boiling milk, run through a jelly bag until clear: the milk punch receipt Franklin sent James Bowdoin in 1763, and its alcohol-free twin.
6 recipes · 2 alcohol-freeRead the story
Lie Tea, the Fake Gunpowder of 1851
Tea dust, sand and gum rolled into pellets and glazed with black lead or Prussian blue: the fake tea a London chemist burned to ash in 1851, and its name.
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Negus, the Warm Wine of Georgian Balls
Port and hot water with sugar, lemon and nutmeg, poured from a jug at balls and evening parties from the 1740s until it faded in the 1890s.
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What Was Smoking Bishop, the Drink in A Christmas Carol?
Scrooge’s smoking bishop was hot spiced port with a roasted clove-studded lemon. The Oxford recipe of 1847, Swift’s oranges and the alcohol-free version.
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Spruce Beer, from Captain Cook to Jane Austen
Molasses, water and spruce essence worked with yeast: the small beer Captain Cook brewed in New Zealand, a New York druggist sold and Jane Austen’s family made.
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Wassail, from a Greeting to a Christmas Bowl
A toast meaning “be healthy,” then a Christmas bowl of hot spiced ale with toast and roasted apples, carried door to door and drunk to the apple trees.
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When Did English Beer Get Its Hops?
In 1542 hopped beer was still the Dutchman’s drink; by 1574 England had its first manual for growing hops. How the hop turned English ale into beer.
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Why Victorians Put Chicory in Their Coffee
Roasted chicory root made weak coffee look dark and strong. How London analysts caught it, how Parliament let it be sold, and why some cooks wanted it anyway.
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Did Medieval People Really Drink Beer Instead of Water?
They drank both. What Andrew Boorde and the medieval cookbooks say about water, who drank it, everyday ale, and the drinks without alcohol in between.
7 recipes · 5 alcohol-freeRead the story
Five Alcohol-Free Drinks for a 1920s Party
Grape juice highballs, egg phosphates, orangeade, ginger ale punch and a London take on American lemonade: what a dry 1920s party poured, and why it worked.
6 recipes · 6 alcohol-freeRead the story
How Were Coffee, Tea and Chocolate Made in 1685?
Coffee boiled with sugar, green tea steeped in a covered pot, chocolate ground with chile and anise: how a 1685 handbook taught Europe the three new drinks.
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Seawater, Pine Resin and Honey: How Roman Wine Tasted
Watered down, often sweetened, sometimes salted with seawater. What Pliny, Columella and the Roman table tell us about the taste of Roman wine.
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What Did Romans Drink Besides Wine?
Water chilled with snow, posca, oxymel, fresh grape juice, grape syrup and milk: what Romans drank besides wine, and why beer belonged to outsiders.
7 recipes · 6 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did Soda Fountains Sell in Winter?
Hot chocolate, ginger, egg lemonade, clam broth and malted milk with pepper: how American soda fountains of the 1880s and 1890s kept selling in winter.
4 recipes · 4 alcohol-freeRead the story
What Did Victorian Children Drink at Christmas?
Tea, coffee, lemonade and a jug of weak negus: what Mrs. Beeton, Punch and an 1893 etiquette book say Victorian children drank at Christmas parties.
2 recipes · 2 alcohol-freeRead the story
Coffee Taverns, the Victorian Answer to the Pub
Penny cocoa, coffee and tea from gas-heated urns, served over a pub-style bar from 5 a.m.: the coffee taverns, coffee palaces and cocoa rooms of the 1870s.
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Saloop, London’s Pre-Dawn Street Drink
A hot, slightly thick drink sold in London before dawn from the 1700s to the 1840s: orchid-root salep in the cookbooks, sassafras tea at the stalls.
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What Were Victorian Non-Alcoholic Beers?
Ginger, lemon, hop and root beers sold as soft drinks were mostly brewed with yeast and held a little alcohol. What Mayhew and a 1919 drinks book show.
7 recipes · 5 alcohol-freeRead the story
