I have had many inquiries about the subject of high tea. The very title used to be a standing joke for British comics, the punchline being: "You want high tea? Put your cup and saucer on the mantelpiece."
Actually, there is a great deal of misconception about high tea over here, conjuring up visions of lace tablecloths, silver tea services and formal afternoon tea enjoyed by high society. In fact, the reverse is true. High tea is a very informal early supper, enjoyed by farm laborers and rural blue-collar workers. These folks start their day very early, so they have their dinner at noon, and high tea provides a fitting end to a long, hard day.
The fare consists of hot dishes, which are filling and rib-sticking. They aren't served in individual courses, but all put on the table at once so the hungry diners can pick and choose. Typical offerings are meat pie, Cornish pasties, bangers and mash, stewed fruit, puddings, pies and cakes and, of course, lashings of hot, milky tea.
High tea also is a monumental Scottish tradition where the meal has to be both frugal in cost and high in filling content. The food consists of kippers, soused herring, mackerel, potted herring, griddle scones and tatties and nepps (potato and turnip pie), lots of hot, buttered toast and jam, and tea, of course, with Dundee cake and shortbread.
Let me clarify a point here: In Britain, tea and cake go together like fish and chips, strawberries and cream. Cake, however fancy, is never served as a dessert after dinner. Cake is very much exclusive to teatime, as are scones, biscuits and pastries. Moreover, tea is not served during or after dinner; coffee in the drawing room is the norm.
A proper English tea consists of assorted finger sandwiches, scones with strawberry or black currant jam, shortbread, Battenberg biscuits and assorted cakes and pastries. This does not include cream teas.
In Devonshire and Cornwall, in many of the tearooms, clotted Devonshire cream is served with the jam and scones. The teas served are Darjeeling, Prince of Wales or Lapsang Souchoung - all black teas that have to be brewed in a pot with boiling water, allowed to steep a few minutes and served in a china cup with a half-inch of milk in the bottom.
Milk always is poured first, no matter what anybody says, for two simple reasons. First of all, pouring boiling tea into the china cup first would crack it; second, it makes the tea taste better. Then add the inevitable one lump or two or, if you must, artificial sweetener.
When brewing tea, be sure to warm the pot first, put in one spoon per person and one for the pot (loose tea) or three to four teabags for a large family pot. Relax and enjoy!
Now we come to the vast range of herbal teas. These are actually tisanes, made from a mixture of herbs, fruit leaves, stalks and flowers. These "teas" originated for purely medicinal purposes: chamomile for the digestion, a rinse for blond hair and a sunburn healer; cenna to keep one regular; lavender to help you sleep; and carroway to alleviate the belly ache (according to Culpepper).
Tisanes go way back into folklore and were used as hot infusions for medicinal reasons, and even as aphrodisiacs. Many herbs are used, and they may be mixed with ordinary tea.
TTFN[[In-content Ad]]
