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Laboratory Exercises (Hot Tea rounding t tea C)
Hot Tea. 3 rounding t. tea 6 C. boiling water 1. Put freshly drawn water on to boil. 2. As soon as it is boiling scald an earthen or granite teapot, put in the tea and pour the boiling water over it. 3. Let stand five minutes then pour tea into cups or into another teapot. If the water is allowed to stand longer on the tea leaves more tannic acid will be drawn out.
Note. If the tea is too strong weaken with boiling water. Tea may be served plain or with cream and sugar or with thin slices of lemon and sugar. At afternoon teas, whole cloves or accasia buds are sometimes served in tea.
Iced Tea. 3 rounding t. tea 5 C. boiling water cracked ice 1. Scald teapot and make tea according to direction for hot tea.
BEVERAGES When tea has steeped five minutes pour into a pitcher and let cool. 3. Before serving, add cracked ice and serve with thinly sliced lemon and sugar.
Boiled Coffee. 6 heaping T. coffee 2 egg shells or 1 egg 1 C. cold water 5 C. boiling water 1. Scald coffee pot. 2. Mix one-half C. cold water, crushed egg shells and coffee together and put into coffee pot. 3. Pour on boiling water and let boil three minutes. 4. Add remainder of cold water and let stand five minutes to settle.
Cold Water Coffee. 6 heaping T. coffee 6. C. cold water 1. Scald coffee pot. 2. Put coffee in muslin bag and put into coffee pot with cold water. 3. Bring slowly to boil and let boil three minutes. 4. Remove from fire and let stand one minute. Put back on stove and let boil three minutes more. Remove bag and let coffee pot stand where coffee will keep hot but not boil until ready to serve.
Filtered Coffee. 6 heaping T. pulverized coffee 6 C. boiling water 1. Put strainer in coffee pot and put coffee into strainer. 2. Place coffee pot on stove and pour the boiling water through the coffee 1/2 C. at a time. After pouring on 1/2 C. cover the coffee pot and allow the water to drip through slowly, then add another half cup and repeat until all the water has been added. 3. If stronger coffee is desired or if the coffee has not been finely ground, pour the coffee out of the coffee pot and re-filter it. Iced Coffee.
Make coffee by any of the above methods, then pour into a pitcher and allow to cool. Add cracked ice and serve in glasses with cream and sugar.
COCOA. 4 T. cocoa 4 T. sugar 1 C. water 4 C. scalded milk t. salt 1. Scald milk in double boiler. 2. Mix cocoa, sugar and salt together. 3. Add water and let boil two minutes to cook the starch thoroughly. 4. Add milk and let it get hot but not boil. (Milk that has boiled is not as easily digested as milk that has not been boiled.) 5. Beat with Dover egg beater until frothy to prevent a scum forming on top, then serve at once.
Note. If cocoa must stand after it is made, keep it hot in the double boiler and beat again before serving.
Chocolate. 2 oz. chocolate + C. sugar 1 C. water 4 C. milk t. salt BEVERAGES Cut chocolate in fine pieces and mix with sugar, salt and water, then follow directions for making cocoa.
Note. Chocolate or cocoa may be served with a spoonful of whipped cream on top or a marshmallow may be dropped on top of the hot beverage instead of the cream. ۲۰
A page of beverage drills from a school cookery laboratory, written when tea and coffee were made in an open pot on a range rather than in a machine. The abbreviations are the standard American ones: t. is teaspoon, T. tablespoon, C. cup (8 fl oz).
- The hinge: five minutes, then off the leavesThe instruction to decant tea into cups or a second warmed pot after five minutes is the whole point of the method. Left on the leaves, the brew keeps extracting tannins and turns harsh; the book's chemistry is sound even if "tannic acid" is a loose name for the polyphenols involved.
- Water temperatureFull boiling water suits the strong black teas this book assumes. Green, white and delicate oolong teas will scorch at 212F; 175-185F is right for those.
- Quantities and yieldThree rounding teaspoons to 6 cups is light by modern habit -- roughly a level teaspoon per cup once the rounding is allowed for. Scale up to a heaped teaspoon per cup if you want the strength of a present-day mug.
- Egg in boiled coffeeThe crushed shell and white coagulate as the coffee boils and trap the grounds, giving a clear cup without a filter. Rinse the shells first. Coffee brewed by any method suffers from a three-minute boil; expect a flatter, more bitter cup than pour-over gives.
- Filtered coffeeThis is pour-over in all but name, done in a pot with a perforated metal insert. Adding water half a cup at a time keeps the bed saturated and the extraction even. Modern paper or metal cone filters do the same job with less babysitting; a re-filter, as suggested, will pull out more, though at the cost of extra bitterness.
- Cocoa: cook the starchCocoa powder is about ten percent starch, and the two-minute boil with water and sugar is what removes the raw, chalky taste. Do not skip it and stir the milk in cold. Once the milk is added, hold it below a simmer.
- Chocolate rather than cocoa"2 oz. chocolate" means unsweetened baking chocolate, not a candy bar; the sugar in the recipe is what balances it. Chopping it fine before it meets the hot water prevents grittiness.
- FrothingThe Dover egg beater was a hand-cranked rotary whisk. A small whisk or an immersion blender does the same work; the aeration genuinely does keep a skin from forming on standing cocoa.
- PotsEarthenware or granite (enamelled steel) is what the book specifies. Glass, porcelain, or stainless steel all serve. Scalding the pot matters more than the material -- a cold pot drops the water below brewing temperature immediately.
Cookery manuals written for school laboratories, as this one was, treated beverages as an exercise in controlled heat and timing rather than as a matter of taste, which is why the tea entry pauses to explain what happens to the leaves after five minutes and the cocoa entry explains why the starch needs boiling. The three coffee methods trace the transition then under way in American kitchens: boiled coffee cleared with egg was the nineteenth-century standard, the cold-water bag method a fussier refinement, and "filtered" coffee the newcomer that would eventually displace both. The note that boiled milk is less digestible than unboiled reflects a widely held belief of the era's domestic science teaching rather than anything demonstrated since. Acacia buds and whole cloves floated in the cup are mentioned in passing for afternoon teas.