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Tea, to Make
An earthenware teapot is better than a metal one for drawing out the flavour and strength of the tea. The amount of tea used must depend upon the quantity required. The old-fashioned allowance is a very sensible one, that is, one large tea-spoonful for each of the company, and one for the teapot. Before making the tea, pour half a pint of boiling water into the teapot, and let it stand for two minutes. Pour it out, and immediately put in the tea. Close the lid, and let it remain for a minute to heat, then pour upon it half a pint of boiling water. Let it stand for three minutes, add sufficient boiling water to fill the teapot, and the tea will be ready for use. Be careful not to drain all the liquor from the pot so long as it is necessary to continue to add boiling water, or the tea will be very weak; and if it is desirable to add a little fresh tea, let it be brewed separately in a teacup before it is added to that which is already made, as its strength will not be drawn out if it is put upon the old leaves. Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that unless the water is really boiling when it is put upon the tea there will be no good tea. "unless the kettle boiling be, Filling the teapot spoils the tea."
A method rather than a formula, and most of it still holds. The details worth translating are the vessel, the water and the quantities.
- The hinge: water at a full boilThe whole method rests on water arriving on the leaf while genuinely boiling, which suits the black teas a book of this date generally assumes. Green and white teas are scorched by boiling water and want roughly 175-185F.
- Half a pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. Used twice here: once to scald and warm the pot, once as the first pour onto the leaf.
- "One for the teapot"A large teaspoon of loose black tea is around 3 g, so the allowance runs generous by modern standards, roughly one heaped teaspoon per 6 oz cup plus one extra. Reduce if you are not planning to top the pot up with more boiling water, which may well be what the surplus spoonful allowed for.
- Earthenware over metalThe preference is sound, though the likely reason is as much heat retention as flavour: glazed earthenware and porcelain hold temperature steadily and are inert. Unlined metal, particularly old tinned or pewter pots, could take on a metallic edge. Modern stainless steel is fine, though it loses heat faster.
- Three minutes, then diluteSteeping a concentrated brew for three minutes and then filling the pot with fresh boiling water gives strength without the bitterness of a long steep. Broken-leaf teas will be brisk at three minutes; whole-leaf teas can take four.
- Topping up the potThis is Victorian practice for tea drunk over a long sitting, and the warning against draining the pot is practical. The later cups will be progressively weaker and more tannic. Modern practice is to strain the leaves out or brew a second pot.
- Adding fresh teaBrewing the new spoonful separately in a cup is correct. Spent leaves have already swelled and matted; dry leaf laid on top of them will not extract properly.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantity depends on the number of drinkers. The couplet at the close is a piece of doggerel, quoted here as a mnemonic.
Instructions this precise about warming the pot and boiling water belong to a period when tea had become an everyday drink in British households rather than a luxury: duties had been cut repeatedly through the nineteenth century, and Indian and later Ceylon teas were arriving in growing quantities from the 1860s onwards, with Ceylon in real bulk only from the 1880s. Stronger, darker, milk-friendly blends gained ground over the lighter Chinese teas across the later part of the century, and such blends stand up to the treatment described here, a short concentrated steep repeatedly extended with fresh boiling water. The rhyme quoted at the close circulated in Victorian household books and is usually treated as anonymous kitchen verse rather than the work of any named author.