Counterfeit coffee
Roasted linden fruit, baked 30 minutes at 150 degrees
The pea-like ripe linden nutlets of the linden (lime) tree Tilia x europaea, or other tilia species can be roasted and ground to a powder to make an instant coffee substitute, or even finer as a nutty flour for cakes, or simply eaten as roasted crunchy things. They are best when collected just as they are about to fall from the trees (between mid July-beginning of August). I collected these in Berlin (Kreuzberg) and Amsterdam (Oud zuid) from Silver linden and Dutch Linden trees.
Also, the Oxford Companion to Food and some wild food sources claim that you can make a ‘chocolate’ from the unripe linden fruit (a recipe that was temporarily marketed by 18th century French chemist Missa by grinding immature linden fruit together with dried linden flowers with a bit of oil). I have tried this but only ended up with a bitter pulp. I even tried removing the green husk and using only the white fleshy bits, quite nice but nothing resembling the mythological ‘Linden chocolate’. However, the roasted mature fruit ground finely and mixed with some oil and Linden honey comes a little closer to a chocolate experience with a hint of mint from the characteristic flavour of linden honey.
Some raw pea-like linden fruit