Two Peas?; or, Not Two Peas

; or, just what was Ishmael drinking at the Spouter-Inn?

In Chapter 2: The Carpet-Bag, we follow Ishmael as he walks through the darkened streets of New Bedford looking for somewhere to sleep — something half-decent, but not too decent. With just a few coins in his pocket, he tells himself to “inquire the price, and don’t be too particular.” After a few false starts, Ishmael finds himself in front of The Spouter-Inn and deems it just shabby enough for a few days while he waits for the schooner to Nantucket. “Here,” he says, “was the very spot for cheap lodgings and the best of pea coffee.”

While this is probably the last word that this blog will have to say about Moby-Dick and coffee (no promises), when I re-read this line recently I couldn’t help but pause and wonder just what Ishmael meant by pea coffee, a beverage which, presumably for good reason, has not stood the test of time. What was it, how was it made, would it really be served at cheap inns in the mid-19th century? And how bad was it, really?

But what really roasted my beans was that in several different annotated editions, including the Norton Critical Edition and a 1964 edition annotated by Charles Feidelson Jr., the footnote for this line suggested that pea coffee was actually made with chickpeas, and not green peas as one might assume. Others, such as the Longman Edition, say the same but did allow that it might also be made from either peas or chickpeas.

It seemed unusual that peas and chickpeas might have been thought interchangeable in this way, with “pea coffee” being a sort of umbrella term for whatever Ishmael expected to drink at the Spouter-Inn, and thought there must be more to say on the matter. Could there be a less important question in all of Moby-Dick? Probably not. But it wouldn’t be the first time a pea was said to cause restless nights.

Herman Melville: 19th Century Coffee Snob

Ishmael’s beverage of choice is all the more curious because Herman Melville was actually something of a coffee aficionado in his time and even “susceptible to caffeine jags,” according to biographer Hershel Parker. He was also particular about its preparation, demanding to be served “just the right amount of coffee which he could then dilute with hot water.” Before one particular trek home from Albany to New York City, he wrote that he sturdied himself with “two prodigious bumpers of coffee,” having “hardly recovered from its effects” the next day.

His preoccupation with coffee reached a new height in an entry from the journal he kept while touring the Holy Land in January 1857. Memorializing a walk around the city, he wrote, "Yonder is the arch where Christ was shown to the people, & just by that open window is sold the best coffee in Jerusalem.”

The “Ecce Homo” Arch in 1864 (coffee shop not pictured)

His love for coffee — love for good coffee, I should say, and disdain for bad coffee — also made its way into several of his books. For instance, the semi-autobiographical Redburn included some light ranting about the unpalatable coffee served to the crew of the Highlander merchant ship. Each day the coffee was as bad as the day before, though he jokes that at least it was always bad in an interesting new way.

[F]or the thing they called coffee, which was given to us every morning at breakfast, was the most curious tasting drink I ever drank, and tasted as little like coffee, as it did like lemonade…. But what was more curious still, was the different quality and taste of it on different mornings. Sometimes it tasted fishy, as if it was a decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it would taste very salty, as if some old horse, or sea-beef, had been boiled in it; and then again it would taste a sort of cheesy, as if the captain had sent his cheese-parings forward to make our coffee of; and yet another time it would have such a very bad flavor, that I was almost ready to think some old stocking-heels had been boiled in it. What under heaven it was made of, that it had so many different bad flavors, always remained a mystery. […]

I always used to have a strange curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it was going to have; and though, sure enough, I never missed making a new discovery, and adding another taste to my palate, I never found that there was any change in the badness of the beverage, which always seemed the same in that respect as before.

(Coffee adulterated with horses liver, baked and turned into a powder was a real thing, by the way, described in the book Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee by Bee Wilson. Meanwhile, British sailors drank “Scotch Coffee,” made by dissolving burnt bread in hot water and adding some sugar.)

In Pierre, Melville described a much more positive experience with coffee in which Reverend Falsgrave smells “all Java’s spices” in an urn of coffee prepared by Pierre, eagerly anticipating the “liquid deliciousness would soon come from it.” Pierre is said to always buy his coffee beans neither ground nor roasted, insisting that “both those highly important and flavor-deciding operations should be performed instantaneously previous to the final boiling and serving” (a hobby horse of coffee snobs to this day).

Ishmael lightly mocks the Spouter-Inn as being a place where one might expect low-quality food and drink, befitting its dim lights, dilapidated frame, and the swinging sign with its “poverty-stricken sort of creak.” In other words, he was entering the inn prepared to be disappointed but ready to condescend to the poor diet provided on a whaling ship. But what was it, exactly, that he was expecting to drink there?

A “crushed chickpea beverage”

Pierre’s preference for roasting and grinding his own coffee is actually a good place to start, in that it was common through the mid-19th century and beyond for grocers to adulterate coffee grinds with any number of similar looking substances. German chemist Friedrich Accum, who published A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons in 1820, wrote that there was no reliable way of telling the difference aside from taste, and thus to always grind it yourself.

The adulteration of ground coffee, with pease and beans, is beyond the reach of chemical analysis; but it may, perhaps, not be amiss on this occasion to give to our readers a piece of advice given by a retired grocer to a friend, at no distant period:—"Never, my good fellow," he said, "purchase from a grocer any thing which passes through his mill. You know not what you get instead of the article you expect to receive—coffee, pepper, and all-spice, are all mixed with substances which detract from their own natural qualities."—Persons keeping mills of their own can at all times prevent these impositions.

Peas(e) and beans were only the beginning of what might be mixed into a bag of grounds to various degrees. Though slightly before Melville’s time at sea and across the pond, Accum rounds up several cases of grocers being fined for defrauding the British public for selling coffee mixed with peas, beans, vegetable powder, and even sand or gravel. Ishmael, however, seems to be fully aware of what he’ll be served, expecting his coffee to be made fully or partially with “peas.”

Now, I imagine that the various annotation mentioned earlier have good reason to suggest that pea coffee was actually made with chickpeas, so I wanted to start there. The trouble is that when you search for chickpea coffee, the vast majority of results suggest that such a drink originated in Turkey due to a coffee import shortage during World War I. Cuba, too, has occasionally stretched their state-produced coffee supply with chickpeas, even quite recently.

In the present day, there are health food companies selling pre-packaged chickpea “coffee” grounds, claiming that it’s a superfood offering “improved digestion, better functions of the nervous system, managing blood pressure and diabetes, and reduced risk of ailments of all kinds.” There are also several YouTube videos showing you how to make it at home.

But the reality is that chickpeas weren’t a regular part of the American diet until the mid-to-late 20th century, and its rare to find references to it in the early 1800s in any form, let alone roasting and grinding them to brew as coffee. That doesn’t mean there weren’t intrepid gardeners/food scientists working a century or two ahead of the curve, though, and oddly enough the very earliest reference to chickpea coffee that I could find comes from Thomas Jefferson.

As I learned, when he wasn’t writing the Declaration of Independence or, you know, the president, Jefferson was immersed in his garden and became a noted horticulturalist of his day. He also kept in frequent correspondence with other gardeners around the country, offering tips, trading seeds, and providing updates on what he was growing. Edwin Morris Betts, editor of a book about Jefferson’s garden, wrote that he was “possessed of a love of nature so intense that his observant eye caught almost every passing change in it.”

In June 1813, not long after he left the White House, Jefferson received chickpea seeds in the mail from his friend Dr. Samuel Brown, which he duly planted the next spring. A note sent back to Brown in April 1814 informed him that the chickpeas had not yet come up — and in almost the same breath rejoiced “in the downfall of Napoleon Bonaparte,” who he called the “scourge of the world.” But we can assume that the chickpeas, unlike Napoleon, did eventually rise and that at some point Jefferson learned that they might be used to make coffee. In February 1824, Jefferson wrote to a coffee merchant in Connecticut, that although “many attempts have been made to find substitutes” for the coffee bean, none had succeeded in replicating its flavor. The chickpea, he allowed, “is the best substitute I have ever tried.”

It’s unclear where Jefferson heard about chickpea coffee, but the general idea of coffee substitutes was becoming increasingly common around this time. Chicory coffee, which is still popular in New Orleans, is thought to have originated in Holland in the mid-1700s, but expanded greatly around 1808 when Napoleon initiated the Continental Blockade, a massive trade embargo that stymied the global coffee trade. The French turned to chicory coffee as a substitute which then spread to areas with French cultural influence like Louisiana.

The Wikipedia page for chickpeas actually contains a note that “In 1793, ground, roasted chickpeas were noted by a German writer as a substitute for coffee in Europe,” citing a report by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas. The trouble is that the cited report gives no more information on the identity of this German writer, and the quote has spread verbatim to all corners of the internet. (If anyone would like to search late 18th-century German newspapers for “kichererbse,” be my guest).

Going forward in time from Jefferson proved just as difficult. Even using the many names for chickpeas in the 19th century (garbanzo, garbanso, garavances, gallavances, galvanic peas, etc.), I couldn’t find another reference to chickpea coffee in the U.S. or U.K. for nearly 40 years, after Melville wrote Moby-Dick. Though my research is limited to just the digitized newspapers and books available online, it’s striking that there’s not a single mention of it for several more decades. In fact, there’s hardly more than a dozen mention of chickpeas for any purpose in American newspapers from 1824 to 1851, and most of those that do recommend avoiding them altogether.

Chickpea coffee first makes its return in October 1866 in the London Morning Post, but only as a complaint that “unsophisticated Spain” had been mixing chickpeas into their coffee. By the end of the century, references had become slightly more common. A Mr. Pennock in Larimer County, Colorado wrote to his newspaper in November 1894 to say that he was “pleased with his success… in growing the Idaho coffee berry,” yet another name for chickpeas. The crop, said Pennock, “has many valuable points outside of that pertaining to the artificial coffee that may be made from its roasted kernels.” Joel Shomacher, editor of the Farm and Fireside journal, wrote in 1898 that “When nicely browned and ground as coffee the peas make an excellent beverage, having a delicious nutty flavor.”

Behold, the Idaho Pea.

But by the beginning of the 20th century, we’re far past the point when it would matter what it was called or how it was made so far as Ishmael is concerned. Again, while I haven’t scoured the world’s libraries for references to chickpea coffee, one might expect it to be a little more common if Melville was making off-hand comments about it, and using its quality (or lack thereof) as an indicator of the cheapness of the Spouter-Inn.

Pea Coffee

In the other corner, we have coffee made with roasted green peas and, well, I think the evidence speaks for itself. To start, among the oldest references I found for pea coffee was in a biography of John Paul Jones, who in this case was not the bass player for Led Zeppelin but the Revolutionary War hero and Father of the American Navy. Jones was born in Scotland and first went to sea in 1759 when he was just 12 years old, working as a cabin boy. Meals on his ship included several colorfully named dishes such as Lobscouse, Plum-duff, and Dog’s Body, all washed down with pea coffee. This particular biography, admittedly, wasn’t published until 1922 and doesn’t include any sources, so take this one with a grain of salt, or perhaps some cream and sugar.

A more substantial trail begins in April 1809 when a contributor to the Republican Argus recommended peas and roasted barley as coffee substitutes. In March 1819, another anonymous contributor to the Harrisburg Republican wrote that although he had been “nauseated” by coffee made with rye, he had reluctantly experimented with roasted garden peas which was “so near to the imported coffee in taste and smell, that we shall not be likely to obtain any substitute that will be more palatable.”

Lydia Maria Child, in her 1829 book The American Frugal Housewife suggested making coffee with roasted peas as a cost-saving measure, along with roasted brown bread crusts and rye grain soaked in rum — a very sailor-ish approach. Child warned, though, that “none of these are very good; and peas are considered unhealthy.” The best way to save money, she concluded, is to either mix them “half and half with coffee,” or simply to go without coffee altogether.

In 1840, London publisher Richard Bentley (who would later become Melville’s own publisher) issued a novel by an anonymous seaman titled Saucy Jack, “a vivid and detailed portrayal of life aboard a British naval vessel during the Napoleonic Wars.” I won’t quote the book at any length here out of respect for several minority groups and women as a whole, but suffice it to say that pea coffee was among the food and drink brought on board at a stop in Portsmouth.

Then there’s a book by Lillian Schlissel about women’s experiences during the great western migration in the mid-19th century. Schlissel pulls from women’s diaries describing the hardships they faced while making their way to Oregon and California. As one woman recalled, “We never had a bit of tea or coffee, the coffee made was pea coffee.”

Here we again cross the point when Moby-Dick was published, but mentions of pea coffee only seem to take off.

In 1854, the New York Times lamented the shuttering of a high-end coffee bean purveyor in Paris which was frequented by the American expatriate community. “The lovers of pure coffee are at this moment in consternation,” says the paper’s European correspondent. The shop was apparently known for its quality control: “every berry is examined before it is admitted into the grinder; and above all, no foreign substance, no chicory, no dried peas, is added to the mixture.”

Pea coffee and other substitutes proliferated even further during the Civil War when the price of coffee beans shot up. John D. Wright includes a definition for pea coffee in his 2001 reference dictionary The Language of the Civil War, describing it as “A coffee substitute in the South during the Union naval blockade... brewed from English peas roasted until they were a dark brown." An article in the Prairie Farmer from March 1862 (republished in Vermont Journal and elsewhere) suggested using not only peas but crops such as rye, sweet potatoes, barley, and carrots.

The high price of tea and coffee has caused many to adopt substitutes for a morning beverage. Go where you will, you head the subject discussed and stepping into houses, you are regaled with the odor of burning peas, rye, barley, or whatever is designed for a substitute. That some of these articles will make a very palatable and wholesome beverage we think no one will deny. We give below some of the recipes that are floating around, and have been commended: […]

Pea Coffee.—It is probably known to many that a very large per cent of the ground coffee sold at the stores is common field peas roasted and ground with the coffee. There are hundreds of thousands of bushels of peas annually used for that purpose. Those who are in the habit of purchasing ground coffee can do better to buy their own peas, burn and grind them, and mix to suit themselves.

The Savannah Republican in June 1864 recommended a preparation for pea coffee, which “consists simply of the common English garden pea, picked from the vine when dry and roasted to a dark cinnamon brown.” The taste was said to be “considerably superior to anything that we have seen in use” if “slightly pungent.” The writer, however, noted that they would “not turn on our heel to exchange it for the genuine article.”

The autobiography of Union soldier Thomas Kirwan, who fought primarily in North Carolina in the 17th Massachusetts regiment, even mentions pea coffee as being part of his rations.

Thus, in the course of about an hour, the recruits were disposed of, and duly incorporated with the regiment—to share in its messes and marches, its skirmishes and scratches, its picket duty and plunder, its whisky and quinine, its tents and hospitals, its hard tack and salt horse, its pea soup and pea coffee, its baked beans without brown bread, its pride and its perils, its glory and its graveyards.

If you’re looking for even more mid-19th century suggestions for coffee substitutes, University of Texas at Tyler scholar Vicki Betts collected dozens and dozens of articles from Civil War-era newspapers, several of which suggest garden peas. None, however, suggest chickpeas.

As a quick aside, one fruitless line of investigation involved checking to see whether Melville grew peas or chickpeas on his farm in Pittsfield, or even if he roasted his own peas to augment his coffee supply. Research on Arrowhead’s “cultural landscape,” however, found that Melville grew corn, potatoes, hay, tomatoes, pumpkins, and asparagus — but neither peas nor chickpeas. By 1859 he was besieged with debts and had no choice but to sell off about half of his land to pay down debts. The rest was later sold to his younger, more successful brother Allan in 1863. Within a few years, Allan and his wife Jane had a thriving farm and garden, replete with garden peas — but still no chickpeas.

Peas & Thank You

There’s no question that in the 19th century people were making coffee with both peas and chickpeas, as well as many other non-coffee substitutes. But from what I found, peas seem to have been the more popular of the two contenders, and likely the one the Melville was more familiar with. He may even have encountered it in his years at sea. Chickpeas, by any name, do have the recommendation of Thomas Jefferson on their side, but at the same time his awareness of chickpea coffee might be somewhat unique, due to his special interest in horticulture.

While Ishmael’s comment does come off as sardonic out of context, it’s also possible it was meant to be read not as an insult but as a sort of initiation into the world of whaling, or just anticipating his return to life at sea.

But the question remains as to whether Melville meant chickpeas when he said peas. Resurfacing from the depths of coffee history, I think one of several explanations could be true:

1. The annotations are wrong. The note on pea coffee is one of hundreds (if not thousands) of annotations in the book and among the most insignificant, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising if this one particular claim (perhaps confused for chicory?) slipped by the fact-checkers.

2. I’m wrong. The world of digitized newspapers and books from the 19th century is just a small fraction of what’s available, and it’s entirely possible that I missed some piece of evidence that lays it all out, clear as day. Or maybe Massachusetts or whaling ships were particular hotspots for chickpea coffee.

3. Neither is wrong. It could be that by “pea coffee” Melville expected neither peas nor chickpeas, specifically, but meant it as more of a generic term of disdain for the kind of low-quality, adulterated coffee expected of a cheap inn. Sort of akin to describing disgusting food as “offal” when you don’t actually mean offal, precisely. (That said, I think it would still be inaccurate to define pea coffee as being made from chickpeas.)

Regardless, I do think we can eliminate the idea that the terms were simply interchangeable. For example, In January 1856, New England agricultural newspaper the Boston Cultivator chimed in on the topic of coffee substitutes, specifically declaring chickpea coffee “rather better” than coffee made with common peas:

More important than the comparison of flavors is that the note indicates that the difference between the two substitutes was clear, and that “pea coffee” was not used to mean that which was made from chickpeas.

Ultimately, based on the massive amount of evidence pointing towards plain ol’ garden peas, I’d be hard pressed to believe that chickpeas belong in the annotation for pea coffee. Though if anyone has evidence to the contrary to share, peas let me know! Otherwise, I deny chickpeas their credentials and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Moby-Dick.