The cultivation and consumption of chicory have now attained a very great importance, not only on the Continent, but also in the United Kingdom. Dating its extended use chiefly from the system pursued by the first Napoleon to substitute home-grown for colonial products, it has gradually become approved and popularised for a beverage, either used alone or more generally mixed with coffee, in numerous countries, where it can be sold far under the price of even the lowest grade coffees.
The manufacture of a factitious coffee from roasted chicory-root would seem to have originated in Holland, where it has been used for more than a century. It remained a secret until 1801, when it was introduced into France by M. Orban of Liége, and M. Giraud of Homing, a short distance from Valenciennes. This root is not superior to many others which possess sweet and mucous principles, but of all the plants which have been proposed as substitutes for coffee, and which, when roasted and steeped in boiling water, yield an infusion resembling the berry, it is the only one which has maintained its ground. The French, not satisfied with chicory, have recently introduced acorn coffee and roasted beetroot. The beet, it is asserted, besides communicating its hygienic qualities, also helps to sweeten the beverage. This new coffee is called “café de betterave,” as the old was called “café chicorée.” These distinctions will soon become as puzzling as those in America, which led the Irish waiter to ask if the gentleman would have coffee-tay or tay-tay.
Mr. George Phillips, when giving evidence before Mr. Scholefield’s Parliamentary Committee on Adulteration, in 1855, stated that, prior to the year 1832, little was heard of the use of chicory in this country, but in the subsequent three years its use had gradually so increased that the Board of Inland Revenue was obliged to take steps against the sale. “I have no doubt (he adds), from my own experience, that a very large bulk of the public prefer the mixture. That, however, is a matter of taste. The trade contend that good coffee, mixed with one-eighth part of chicory, and sold at a moderate price, makes a better beverage than ordinary coffee would do at the same price, and the great mass of the public prefer it. Chicory sold as coffee yields a certain profit, but probably it equalises itself in the general competition of trade. There is a large quantity of chicory sold by itself, and drank as a beverage in the neighbourhood of Manchester and Liverpool. I believe the price of a pound of the cheapest kind of coffee, purchased by the bulk of the poor people, and a pound of the mixture, is about the same. The trade say, when we use a portion of chicory we use a better coffee. I do not know the fact of my own knowledge. Whether the coffee sold in mixtures is of a superior quality to that sold as a pure article would be very difficult to ascertain; it depends upon the question of taste and aroma. The chicory itself is not always pure.”