Many thanks to Eliseu Bettencourt for the following ruminations on making coffee substitutes from seemingly inappropriate plants.
A paper published in volume 54 of GRACE about the utilization of lupin seeds for the preparation of a beverage, brought back some dormant thoughts. ((Andrea Heistinger & Klaus Pistrick. ‘Altreier Kaffee’: Lupinus pilosus L. cultivated as coffee substitute in Northern Italy (Alto Adige/Südtirol). Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 54:1623-1630. DOI: 10.1007/s10722-007-9265-y.))
The paper describes the utilization of Lupinus pilosus L. as a coffee substitute, in a remote village in the North of Italy sitting at 1200 m above sea level. There are also reports of the cultivation of L. consentinii Guss. in the same area. Interesting to note is the origin of the two species. While L. pilosus has its origin in Southern Europe and the Middle East, L. cosentinii occurs in a very restricted area of Southern Portugal, and a bit on the northern coast of Morocco, and in Sicily. The village, Altrei by name, is located on an old mule and cart track, already important in prehistoric time, that connects Venice via the valley of the river Etsch to the Brenner Pass in the north. Apparently the lupins got up there to Altrei via this connection.
Reading this story kind of woke up some old information I had in my head. In 1981, I was on a collecting mission in the province of Galicia, northwestern Spain, for cultivated and wild lupin species. In a remote village we came to talk to an old man whom we asked if he knew the plant and where could we find it. The man had served during WW1 and his eyes were always red and tearful because he had been attacked with mustard gas in the trenches. He knew the lupins quite well and told us that, during the Spanish Civil War, they had tried to roast the seeds of L. angustifolius L. to use as a coffee substitute, but with very poor results due to its bitterness because of the alkaloids.
My mother also told me that they have tried to make flour out of the rhizome of the Hedychium gadnerianum in the Azores during the WW2, but again with very poor results. The plant, originally from the Himalayas, was introduced in the Azores in the middle of the 19th century as an ornamental, becoming a tremendous invasive species and probably the major threat to the endemic flora. However, they were much more successful with roasted barley, which was ground with the help of a bottle and used as a coffee substitute. What people will go through to get a cappuccino in the morning!
Nice recollections, but one thing has always puzzled me about this whole ersatz kaffee klatsch: why bother? I mean, if the point is to get a hit of caffeine, then none of the substitutes is going to deliver. If the point is to have a grown-up, bitter (or at least non-sweet) drink, then why call it coffee?
And for what it is worth, I like an orzo espresso from time to time, but I know it ain’t coffee.
I guess in times of hardship there wouldn’t have been mountains of sugar to stir into it, which is another thing that mystifies me about coffee drinking in Italy, but that’s another story.
I’m not sure why bitter brews are often called “coffees”, when they may have little or no caffeine in them. Perhaps people don’t only drink them for their caffeine “kick”, but also for their bitter principles, which do wonderful things for their digestive system…(increasing digestive secretions, supporting liver function, and assisting peristalsis, etc.)