How Coffee Saved Noblewomen from Drunkenness: The Story of Beer-Based Gramatka
How did coffee transform the morning habits of noblewomen in the eighteenth-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth? Historian Jędrzej Kitowicz recounts how coffee replaced a traditional beer-based breakfast soup known as gramatka and, in his view, helped curb excessive consumption of strong spirits.
When I read Jędrzej Kitowicz, I sometimes get the feeling that he was writing not merely a historical account, but a wickedly sharp and remarkably accurate chronicle of everyday life among the nobility.
Take, for example, his reflections on coffee. According to Kitowicz, in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, coffee was not simply a fashionable novelty but had become an almost indispensable morning ritual. And not just because it was delicious, prestigious, and associated with sophisticated urban life. The medicine of the day quite seriously maintained that getting out of bed on an empty stomach was unhealthy, let alone venturing outside into the fresh air in such a state. This helped establish coffee as a distinctly morning beverage.
As I wrote earlier, the first coffeehouses appeared in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth around 1700. By the end of the eighteenth century, coffee had become so widespread that it was beginning to displace traditional morning drinks from everyday life.
So if you, too, find it impossible to properly come to life in the morning without your first cup of coffee, remember: this is not merely a trick invented by marketers. Perhaps an old tradition inherited from your ancestors, dating all the way back to the reign of Augustus III, is still alive in you.
Much like another classic noble custom: treating yourself with pepper-infused spirits, a practice mentioned by the French author Claude Jordan in his Voyages historiques de l’Europe, in connection with his travels through the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth towards Moscow in the seventeenth century.
Kitowicz even writes that particularly devoted coffee lovers could have a cup brought straight to their beds the moment they opened their eyes.
Pious ladies preparing to receive Holy Communion would then hurry home as quickly as possible, eager to find their coffee ready and waiting. Rural parishioners living farther from the church sometimes even brought coffee with them, so they could enjoy their favourite drink immediately after the service rather than remain on an empty stomach for too long.
Interestingly, Kitowicz seems to approve of this custom.
Why?
Because the alternative was considerably more entertaining.
Before coffee became fashionable, noblewomen in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth used to begin their mornings with a sweet, hot soup made from beer, wine, sugar, eggs, and spices.
If we compare this passage with my earlier article, the description strongly resembles gramatka, a traditional warming morning dish that for a long time served much the same purpose as coffee would later serve.
In that earlier article, I explained how gramatka was among the popular morning drinks of the nobility and gradually gave way to coffee during the eighteenth century.
But here is where things become particularly interesting.
According to Kitowicz, after finishing what appeared to be a perfectly innocent bowl of soup, the lady of the house and her female guests would sometimes quietly slip away to the household medicine cupboard — the so-called armaria — where they would begin adding strong spirits to their gramatka.
And then, as the author rather wickedly observes, these respectable ladies might gradually turn into capricious characters, eccentrics, and eventually outright fiery drunkards.
Kitowicz is, of course, being somewhat dramatic. But he does it brilliantly.
His underlying point is remarkably simple: in noble households, coffee was not merely a new fashion. It also replaced an older morning custom in which beer, eggs, and spices could all too easily be accompanied by something considerably stronger.
His conclusion is therefore unexpectedly sober: coffee deserves praise, if only because it saved not just women but many men as well from the excessive consumption of strong spirits.
What I particularly like about this episode is that it reveals the history of beverages not through grand banquet menus or commercial records, but through the vivid realities of everyday domestic life.
The story of coffee in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is usually told as a story of fashion, coffeehouses, and exotic influences from the East.
But here we encounter a much more down-to-earth side of history: coffee also prevailed because it offered a convenient, prestigious, and comparatively sober alternative to the old-fashioned morning pick-me-up.
So yes, in a certain sense, coffee really did save noblewomen from drunkenness.
At least, if we are to believe the sarcastic yet remarkably observant Jędrzej Kitowicz.
- Opis obyczajów i zwyczajów za panowania Augusta III ↗ — Jędrzej Kitowicz, W drukarni Walentego Stefańskiego, 1840–1841
A historical and memoir-based account by the Polish priest and writer Jędrzej Kitowicz, describing everyday life, customs and social practices in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the reign of Augustus III (1733–1763). Written in the eighteenth century, the work was first published in Poznań in 1840–1841. Of particular value to the history of beverages are its accounts of noble households, drinking customs, beer, wine, spirits and the growing popularity of coffee. Kitowicz describes a traditional morning soup made with beer and the gradual replacement of older drinking customs by coffee.