They have inspired rituals and ceremonies, fostered social interaction and political debate. Their trade has linked cultures and hemispheres. Their nearly universal appeal has endured for centuries, giving voice to authors and poets, lovers and rebels.

And, as the Lilly Library’s Stephen Cape observes:  “They’re just flavors.”

Between 1598 and 1601, the words for coffee, tea, and chocolate first appeared in English-printed books.  And, says Cape, curator of an upcoming Lilly Library exhibition, the three have remained forever intertwined, appearing together in references ranging from early medical books and travel accounts to historical cookery books.

“Coffee, tea, and chocolate were three new flavors that all appeared at the same time,” Cape says. “Two were similar in that they were stimulants, and, well, chocolate was chocolate.  From the beginning the three were always linked, and that virtually never ended.”  

* What: Kahveh, Choclatl, Ch’a: The New Flavors Arrive

* When: Now through September 4

* Where: Lilly Library

Of particular interest to Cape is documenting the link between these flavors and students.

By the mid-seventeenth century, coffee, tea, chocolate and students had already found each other, Cape observes, pointing to a 1669 book that extols the virtues of tea (“a most excellent drink for studious and sedentary persons, to quicken them in their operations”).  As for coffee and chocolate:  “Though the Turkish Coffee administer the like cordiality,” the author continues,  “and the Mexican Chocolate be another excellent drink, yet Tea, if the best, very much excelleth them ..."

Cape, a self-described “confirmed coffee addict,” knows intuitively that students today—and Americans in general—far prefer coffee to tea.  Indeed, coffee consumption in the United States is more than 25 gallons per capita, and university students have long relied on the drink’s caffeine to help them study late into the night.  

More than that, coffee provides an excuse for social interaction, a truism as evident today around college campuses as it was in the hey-day of European coffee houses in the 1800s, when locals would  linger over a hot drink, socialize, and debate current events.  

Publishers at the time, in fact, took every opportunity to link themselves with this popularity: Cape will display books from the Lilly Library collections in which the publishers conspicuously identify that the book was published near a coffee house.  

Cape notes you can go to local coffee houses in Bloomington and see the same kind interaction, where students order a double skinny cappuccino and chatter about campus life. “They’re not terribly different than from the 17th century,” Cape says of the coffee houses.

And not far from campus, either: The Main Library, long a place for students to interact and to work collaboratively, will open a coffee bar this summer near its Information Commons.