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Five-o'clock Tea
INGREDIENTS.
Candied ox-heart cherries.
Slices of lemon.
Boiling water.
Method. - Fill the tea-ball half full with tea, put the ball into the cup, with a cherry or a slice of lemon, and pour boiling water over them; remove the ball when the tea is of the desired strength.
A single cup of tea brewed to order at the table rather than in a pot, which is the whole point of the method — each guest gets the strength she wants. Two details carry it: the water must be genuinely boiling as it hits the leaf, and the ball comes out before the tea turns bitter.
- The tea ballA perforated metal sphere on a chain, the ancestor of the modern infuser. The recipe gives neither the size of the ball nor the size of the cup, so "half full" is a matter of judgement rather than a fixed measure; a mesh basket infuser gives better results because the leaf can actually unfurl, which a tightly packed ball prevents.
- Water temperatureThe recipe calls for boiling water, and water at a full boil (212F) poured directly onto the leaf is correct for black tea, which is presumably what is meant, though the page does not say. If you substitute green or white tea, drop to 175-185F or it will taste of scorched hay.
- "Desired strength" in minutesThree to four minutes for black leaf. Past five it goes tannic and drying, and because the ball sits in the drinking cup the only correction is to top the cup up with more hot water.
- Candied ox-heart cherriesOx Heart (or Oxheart) is an old name for a large, heart-shaped sweet cherry. Candied whole cherries under that varietal name are hard to find now; use candied or glace cherries, or a good brandied cocktail cherry. Avoid the bright red maraschino sort, which will bleed dye into the cup.
- Cherry or lemon, not bothThe original offers them as alternatives and means it. Lemon and a sugared fruit fight each other, and lemon should never meet milk in the same cup — the acid curdles it.
- YieldOne cup, made one at a time. For a party this means a kettle kept at the boil and a ball per guest.
Five-o'clock tea was the fashionable late-afternoon ritual of the Anglo-American middle and upper classes, filling the long gap between a light lunch and a dinner that had, by general tendency, grown later; the custom is traditionally credited to Anna, Duchess of Bedford, in the 1840s, though the story is repeated more often than it is documented. By the 1890s it had become an American social institution with its own equipment — kettle and spirit lamp, tea ball, thin porcelain — and its own literature. Brewing in the cup rather than the pot suited a hostess pouring for a few callers at a time, without a pot going stale on the tray.