Which Came First?

Which came first, the coffee shop or the sweets to go with it? The tradition of exquisite chocolate treats goes centuries in Vienna, but the confections were developed after the first coffee shops opened there, at least according to a recent article on World Stamp News.

The article mentions that a confectioner was assigned to the imperial court as early as the mid-16th century. According to Mark Pendergrast's Uncommon Grounds, however, the first coffee shops opened in the 17th Century;  the discrepancy might just be an error with the nomenclature (17th Century = 1600s).

In any case, coffee and confections have a long history together, and the Austrian post office is celebrating the original Schweden-Bomben (which sounds a lot like bon-bon to me) with a new stamp. My thanks, as always, to Henry Lukas of the Spellman Museum for this scrumptious tidbit of coffee history!