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Wellesley Tea
Make same as Iced Tea, having three crushed mint leaves in each glass into which the hot infusion is strained. FIVE O'CLOCK TEA SERVICE. - Page 34.
CHOCOLATE SERVICE. - Page 41. 00000 COFFEE PERCOLATORS AND POT. - Page 38.
AFTER-DINNER COFFEE SERVICE. - Page 38.
STO
A two-line variation that depends entirely on the book's iced tea method: a hot infusion strained over mint, then chilled. The stray lines about tea services and coffee percolators are plate captions from the illustrations, not part of the recipe.
- The base infusionThe recipe only says to make it as for Iced Tea, a hot infusion strained over the mint. Standard practice is freshly boiled water on black tea leaves, covered, left to stand a few minutes and then strained; long steeping extracts more tannin, which tells all the more once the tea is chilled and diluted.
- Water temperatureBlack tea wants water at or just off the boil. Water long held on the stove is traditionally thought to make a flatter cup.
- StrengthTea meant to be iced is generally brewed stronger than for drinking hot, since melting ice dilutes it.
- Bruise the mintPress the three leaves against the glass with a spoon before straining the hot tea over them. Heat and light pressure release the oils; pounding the leaves to a pulp is usually said to give a grassy, bitter note.
- Order of operationsThe hot tea goes over the mint first, then the ice, not the other way around. Pouring boiling liquid onto ice in a thin glass risks cracking it, and the mint gets no chance to infuse.
- SweeteningIf sugar is wanted, dissolve it in the tea while it is still hot, or use a sugar syrup. Granulated sugar will not dissolve in a cold glass.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities beyond three mint leaves per glass. A teaspoon of leaf to a cup of water was a common allowance of the period.
The name is generally taken to nod to Wellesley College, the women's college west of Boston, whose circles overlapped with those of the Boston Cooking School; the attribution is traditional rather than documented. Iced tea was still a comparatively young habit in American cookbooks at this date, cheap and widely delivered ice being a development of the later nineteenth century, and mint was an obvious garnish with the julep behind it. The surrounding page references to five o'clock tea, chocolate and after-dinner coffee services are a reminder that the book treated beverages as a matter of equipment and ceremony as much as of brewing.