Ask the Past: hot drinks

I'm giving up caffeine for a month, and I don't know how I'll manage without tea and coffee. Can you recommend any other hot drinks that I can start my day with?

This is just the kind of problem people used to have all the time - both tea and coffee were rationed during WWII, for example, and Domestic Medical Advice (1913) also recommends avoiding tea and coffee in its special diets for fever, gout, nervous prostration and gonorrhea - so I have several good options for you. Farmhouse Fare (1942) recommends this Winter Cordial, which sounds extremely hearty:

4 dessertspoonfuls fine oatmeal; 1/2 teaspoonful ground ginger; 2 dessertspoonfuls Demerara sugar; 1 lemon; 1 quart boiling water.

Mix oatmeal, sugar and ground ginger together in a basin. Grate the rind of the lemon and add. Gradually pour in the boiling water, stirring the whole. Put in saucepan, add lemon juice and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain and serve hot.

If you're looking for something a little richer, perhaps this Hot Egg Milk from Lady Hackett's Household Guide (1940) would be a nice way to start the day:

Two teaspoonfuls of sugar, one ounce of cream, one egg, hot milk to fill an eight ounce mug. Top with whipped cream and sprinkle with nutmeg. If there is no facility for keeping hot milk, use about two ounces of cream, and fill the mug with hot water.

Of course, there are some mornings on which nothing but coffee will do the job, and for those mornings, there's Wheat Coffee (No. 1) from The CWA Cookery Book, Tenth Edition (1950)

2lb Bran; 1 cup wheatmeal; 1 cup pollard; 1 cup treacle; 1/2 cup boiling water.

Mix bran, pollard, and wheatmeal together, then, after mixing the hot water with the treacle, add the latter to the mixture, and mix thoroughly. Place in baking dishes in thin layers. Bake a dark brown. Stir well, and do not burn or coffee will be bitter. Put in tins and keep. - Mrs M. Clarke, Goomalling.

I'm sure that will help.