Ditto bread (and coffee)

[Beverly Flanigan]

I recall my dad saying early Scandinavian immigrants to America often used
grain-based coffee, esp. in winter when access to real coffee was more
difficult.  My Swedish immigrant grandfather had to drive a team of horses
40 or 50 miles to the nearest railroad station, where supplies came in.

Beverly (Olson) Flanigan

At 05:00 PM 8/28/2002 +0200, you wrote:
>Barry writes:
> > Also mentioned are "corn coffee, ditto bread, cowpeas..."  Corn coffee?
>
>The use of roasted grains as substitutes for coffee was earlier common in
>poorer homes in Sweden, and during the two World Wars, when coffee could
>not be imported, was used quite generally.
>The Dictionary of the Swedish Academy has:
>"Såsom kaffesurrogater begagnas rostadt korn... (1896)".
>(As substitutes for coffee are used roasted barley...)
>I have also found a reference from 1810 to the use of roasted "turkiskt
>korn" as a coffee substitute, but can find no clue to what kind of cereal
>is meant (it could be a wild form of wheat or barley - they are common in
>the Orient). "Korn" _could_ earlier be used for "grains" in general, but
>nowadays is used only for barley. Possible is importation into American
>English through Swedish immigrants.
>Jan Ivarsson, Sweden
>jan.ivarsson at transedit.st