Russian Tea
Scald earthenware teapot with boiling water and put in two teaspoonfuls of tea, pour over boiling water, filling the pot one fourth full, and let stand three minutes. Then fill pot full of boiling water and let brew five minutes. In serving, dilute with hot water, and put a slice of lemon in each cup. Preserved strawberries or cherries may be added.
A sound method that survives modern scrutiny: a two-stage steep in a pre-warmed pot, then dilution at the cup. A few points on quantities and timing.
- Strength and yieldTwo teaspoonfuls is a modest amount of leaf for a full pot, but the instruction to dilute in the cup shows the pot was meant to be let down with hot water at serving. The recipe gives neither the size of the pot nor the proportion of the dilution, so the yield cannot be pinned down.
- The scald mattersRinsing the earthenware with boiling water first is the hinge. A cold pot drops the water below boiling on contact and the leaf never fully opens, which is why the instruction leads the recipe.
- Eight minutes totalThree minutes in a quarter-full pot plus five more after topping up is a long steep by current standards, but it is intended for a concentrate that will be diluted. Brewed at full strength for that long, black tea turns harshly tannic.
- Which teaThe recipe does not say which tea; loose leaf is the safe assumption for the period, most likely a Chinese or Ceylon black. Modern equivalents would be a Keemun, a Russian Caravan blend, or plain unflavoured Ceylon. Bagged tea, being cut fine, will over-extract badly on this timing; reduce the second steep to two or three minutes if that is all you have.
- Preserved fruitA spoonful of thick strawberry or cherry preserve in the cup, stirred in or eaten alongside, replaces sugar. Use a real preserve with whole fruit rather than a smooth jelly; the point is the fruit as much as the sweetness.
Tea reached Russia overland from China by caravan in the seventeenth century, and the habit that grew up there — a very strong concentrate, or zavarka, kept in a small pot and let down with boiling water at the table — is close to what this recipe describes, minus the samovar that normally supplied the hot water. "Russian tea" in English-language cookbooks of this period generally meant simply tea taken with lemon rather than milk. The preserved strawberries or cherries recall the Russian custom of taking tea with jam or other sweets rather than sugar stirred in, though the term vprikusku strictly describes holding a lump of sugar in the mouth while drinking.