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Russian Tea
Make the tea as usual. Serve with thin slices of lemon from which the seeds have been removed.
The instruction assumes a reader who already knows how her household makes tea, so the only real content is the lemon. A few notes fill in what the original takes for granted.
- "As usual" means strong black tea"As usual" means whatever the household's ordinary tea was; in an American book of this period that would most likely be a black leaf tea. The recipe gives no leaf, no strength and no steeping time.
- Lemon instead of milkThe recipe calls for lemon and says nothing about milk. Lemon juice will curdle milk in the cup, which is why the two are not generally combined.
- Slice thinly, and seed themThe recipe directs that the slices be thin and the seeds removed; it gives no thickness and no number of slices per cup.
- Sugar or preservesTea with a spoonful of tart fruit preserve — cherry, raspberry, or currant — stirred in or eaten from the spoon is a Russian custom, though this recipe calls for neither sugar nor preserves.
- Glasses, not cupsTea in Russia was commonly drunk from clear glasses in metal holders, though the recipe does not specify a vessel. If glass is used it should be heatproof; ordinary tumblers can crack.
"Russian tea" in American cookbooks covers two quite different things. The older and simpler sense is this one: strong black tea taken with lemon and sugar rather than milk, the way tea was drunk from the samovar in Russia, where it arrived overland by caravan from China rather than by sea. At some point the phrase was also being attached to a spiced punch of tea with orange and lemon juice, cloves and cinnamon, served hot at church suppers and afternoon receptions — a drink with very little Russian about it.