Coffee Or Tea: In Dickens' World, It Might Be A Choice Between Good And Evil
The eccentric, angelic, villainous and beguiling characters populating the teeming novels of Charles Dickens — whose birthday is today — are constantly inviting one another to tea. Not all of them, however, drink tea. Some prefer coffee.
A harmless preference, you might say.
Not so fast, says British food historian Pen Vogler, who has a whimsical but rather wonderful theory to offer about the Victorian author's various characters' moral fiber based on who drinks what beverage. According to her, the good guys prefer tea while the dodgier ones plot and scheme over coffee.
In , her elegantly produced new book, Vogler combines her twin passions for English food and Charles Dickens to recreate 60 Victorian dishes that feature either in his novels or his life. The recipes — updated to the roast goose and plum pudding from to the fragrant bowl of punch that helped dissolve Mr. Micawber's insolvency blues in .
