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Tea a la Biltmore
Serve tea sweetened with red and white rock candy instead of sugar. A slice of lemon may be added.
A one-line serving idea rather than a formula, so the work is in the details it leaves out. The point of the thing is the slow-dissolving crystal sugar, which sweetens gradually and looks like something in the cup.
- Rock candy quantityRock candy is simply sucrose grown into large crystals, so it is as sweet as granulated sugar by weight, not by volume. One good crystal or a short swizzle stick per cup is roughly a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half of sugar; expect to stir for a minute or more before it registers.
- Red and whiteThe colour is decoration only, and a red of this date could have come from cochineal or from one of the coal-tar dyes then in use. Modern rock candy sticks use food colouring and often a flavour with it, so read the label if you want plain sweetness rather than cherry or cinnamon.
- Brew the tea stronger than usualSweetening happens slowly here. A black tea, four minutes off boiling water, poured hot: crystals dissolve much more slowly in a cup that has cooled.
- Lemon, not milkThe optional slice of lemon rules out milk in the same cup; the acid will curdle it. Serve lemon and milk on separate plates if you are pouring for several people.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. For a tea table, allow one crystal or stick per person plus a few extra, and set them out in a small dish with tongs.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the small flurry of drink books published as national Prohibition arrived in the United States, when hotels and hostesses alike needed a repertoire that did not depend on the bar. Tea service became correspondingly showy, and this recipe carries a Biltmore name, though which Biltmore is not certain. Rock candy itself is much older than the fashion: crystallised sugar had been sold for centuries as both a confection and a mild remedy, often steeped in whisky or lemon for a cough, and it survived in respectable form as a tea sweetener and a stirrer for punch. The recipe is a reminder that a great deal of what these books offered was not a new taste but a new thing to look at in the cup.