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Time for Tea
Image above; A good spread Opposite, from back: Linzer Torte; fresh scones £1.10 each, spread with Strawberry Extra Jam Preserve £3.75 for 340g, and Jersey Clotted Cream £2.65 for 227g; Cinnamon Nablab; Gigantissimi Florentines £14.95 for 250g; Chocolate Champagne Truffle Cake £35; Lemon Tarts £3.95 each; Iced Fancies. sandwiches; Lemon Curd Piccadilly Biscuits £5.95 for 200g; Chocolate Pearl Piccadilly Biscuits £5.95 for 200g; Victoria Sponge £29.50; Traditional Shortbread Fingers £12.95 for 500g; Pear & Clove Jam. All silverware and crockery can be found on the First Floor at Fortnum & Mason
From traditional crumpets dripping with butter to forgotten favourites with curious names, there's more to afternoon tea than cucumber sandwiches. Elisabeth Luard takes a moment to savour this most British of indulgences.
Take it any way you like – Indian or Chinese, milk or lemon, plain or fancy, with sandwiches or hot-buttered toast – afternoon tea is the meal at which the cooks of these islands excel. Drawing inspiration from traditional strengths – baking and dairy products, a larder well stocked with potted meats, jams and preserves – it’s small wonder that no other national cuisine has anything like it.
All serious tea cooks pride themselves on a light hand with the scones. My Edinburgh grandmother baked a batch for breakfast with extra to be saved for tea, never reheated but split, spread with butter and crisped on a hot griddle. To follow (or to come before, there was nothing rigid about the order) was a whole flotilla of sybaritic little mouthfuls with regional names: Richmond Maids-of-Honour, Banbury Cakes, Eccles Cakes, Bakewell Tarts, Cornish Fairings, Shrewsbury Biscuits and Grasmere Gingerbread.There was chocolate cake layered with crunchy butter icing, coffee and walnut cake, and my personal favourite, Cinnamon Nablab; a treat from Scotland’s East Coast trading ports.
There was chocolate cake layered with crunchy butter icing, coffee and walnut cake, and my personal favourite, Cinnamon Nablab; a treat from Scotland’s East Coast trading ports.
Tea as a drink arrived in England in the seventeenth century, although it got off to a shaky start. Instructions in the preparation of ‘cha’ are first given circa 1650 in Sir Kenelm Digby’s The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, one of our earliest kitchen manuals. Sir Kenelm, diplomat, mathematician and magician (he had quite a career path), explains that the raw materials came from a Jesuit returned from China, where the preparation had been popular for centuries. The leaves, he explained, should be infused for ‘no longer than it takes to say the Miserere very leisurely’ but gave no further instruction. Misunderstanding the situation, his readers ate the leaves and threw the rest away.
A century later – time enough to perfect the recipe – the taking of afternoon tea had become a delightful piece of theatre, an opportunity for fashionable eighteenth-century ladies to display their glamorous gowns and flirt with lovers. As a light meal taken early in the evening, tea time was welcomed rather more prosaically into the Victorian country house by Nanny, who complained that the 10-course Victorian dinner kept the children awake all night.
My elegant Edwardian aunt Monica, born around 1900, remembered presiding over afternoon tea in her family’s country mansion in the 1920s. When company was expected, the tea set – Spode or Minton, Wedgwood or Royal Worcester – was chosen with an eye to the social standing of the visitor. And since pouring the tea was the privilege of the senior lady of the house, Monica remembers, when her mother was absent, her brothers rushing upstairs calling, ‘Quick, Monica, come quick or so-and-so will pour!’
In Monica’s day, tea was served in the drawing room at five o’clock, the hour when the children, brushed and scrubbed, were brought from the nursery to join their parents. For grown-ups, the choice was Chinese or Indian, lemon or milk, a tea strainer in its own little bowl and lump sugar proffered with tongs.
The glory of the table was a three-layered cake stand. The lowest layer had thin-cut bread and butter, and the next had tiny triangular sandwiches filled with finely sliced tomato or cucumber from the greenhouse, with something savoury (potted home-cured ham or poached chicken or anchovy relish) for the men. On the top tier was the cutting cake: seed or cherry or Madeira cake, or a cream-stuffed Victoria sponge for a treat. In winter there would be toasted tea cakes or muffins or crumpets dripping with butter. In summer, little tarts, crumbly and sweet, filled with fresh fruit. For the children, said Monica, it was the happiest meal of the day.
In winter, there would be toasted tea cakes or muffins... In summer, little tarts, crumbly and sweet, filled with fresh fruit. For the children, it was the happiest meal of the day.
This is just as it should be. Afternoon tea is a friendly, festive, leisurely occasion at which young and old, family and guest can come and go as they please. The time can drift from three o’clock (sweet things only) to six o’clock (a substantial high tea with savouries too). It’s what we do best – the posy in our culinary bonnet. Time stands still for teatime. Time to count our blessings, time enough to dream.
RECIPES
Classic Sandwiches
Proper sandwiches for tea should be tiny and crustless, and cut into triangles, squares or fingers.
Cucumber: Very thin-cut brown bread spread with well-peppered cream cheese, very thinly sliced cucumber and crusts removed.
Anchovy Relish: Unsalted butter and Fortnum’s Anchovy Relish sprinkled with chopped chives.
Marmite and watercress sandwiches: Use
thin-cut brown bread and roll up like a miniature Turkish carpet.
Edwardian Sandwiches
Pondicherry: Hard-boiled egg mashed with unsalted butter, curry powder and chutney in white bread, crusts off and cut into fingers.
Princess: Grated cheese, hard-boiled egg yolk, mustard and cream.
Colnbrook: Shredded boiled beef, mace, butter and shredded pickled cabbage (sauerkraut).
Turkish: Hard-boiled eggs mashed with butter, anchovies and shrimp.
Sefton: Sardines mashed with cream cheese, lemon and cayenne.
TEA TASTING NOTES
Fortnum’s offers more than 100 kinds of tea, each very different from our everyday brew. Perhaps it’s time to try something new?
To prepare a perfect pot:
Fill the kettle with freshly drawn water and bring it to the boil. Meanwhile, warm the pot. Remove the kettle as soon as it boils and allow it come off the boil for a minute or two. Measure the tea into the pot, allowing 1 teaspoon per person and one for the pot. Pour the not-quite-boiling water onto the leaves, stir once and leave to infuse for 4-5 minutes. Serve in china cups. Add a splash of milk or a slice of lemon to taste.
Fortnum’s Afternoon Blend (£8.95 for 250g)
As a general rule, high-grown teas are delicate and low-grown leaves are robust, making this blend of Ceylon teas picked from both higher and lower regions a light, refreshing brew with plenty of body. Perfect with freshly baked scones split and spread with clotted cream and strawberry jam.
Japanese Genmaicha (£37.50 for 125g)
To make this fascinating green tea, the freshest and most tender leaves of the tea bush are hand-picked and briefly steamed to seal in the flavour and to arrest the natural oxidisation process. The tea is then heated again and rolled into needles. At the end of the process, roasted corn and rice are added to the mix. The liquor is light and refreshing with a lightly savoury flavour.
Malawi Antlers (£18.75 for 125g)
This handmade white tea is unique in the world of tea. It is made from a rare variety of tea bush, the tender shoots of which are dried slowly over several days. The leaves are then stripped off by hand, leaving juicy stems that resemble a deer's antlers. Less than 100kg of this tea is produced every year, making it very sought after. It has a very delicate, sweet, smooth, honeyed flavour with blossom notes.
Assam Doomur Dullung (£12.50 for 125g)
Doomur Dullung's STGFOP grade contains the highest proportion of golden tips and the highest quality of leaf, ensuring a truly first-class tea. This tea is hearty and malty with a hint of sweetness and a smooth finish.