Artifact: Coffee Beans
Materials: Coffee beans
Dimensions:
Date:
Origin:
Collection: MarkSweep via WikiMedia Commons
License: Public Domain
Ledger Entry: Coffee
Department: Grocery
Customer: Mary Janey
Ledger Page: 276
Imported From:
Product Description
Though tea was the preferred warm beverage of colonial Virginians prior to the Boston Tea Party of 1773, they did also drink coffee. Coffee drinking gained prominence in Britain and the British colonies after the opening of Turkish coffee houses in London toward the end of the seventeenth century. Serving coffee, along with tea, chocolate, and sweets, was considered a sign of proper English class.
Citation: Pippa Shirley, "Tea, Coffee and Chocolate," in Elegant Eating: Four Hundred Years of Dining in Style, ed. Philippa Glanville and Hilary Young (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2002), 108-111; Katharine E. Harbury, Colonial Virginia's Cooking Dynasty (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004)
Historical Price: 2 shillings per lb.; Modern USD: $22.4
Product Variations
The databases record twenty-three purchases of coffee. These ranged from one to thirteen pounds of coffee, which cost from eighteen pence to eighteen pounds.
