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Beverages: Hot and Cold (TEA EA-In making tea a tin)
TEA EA-In making tea a tin or granite pot should not be used, but one of either earthen, china or silverware. When a metal pot is used, the tannic acid acts upon the metal, thus producing a poisonous compound. The water should be freshly boiled and used at the first boil, as after it boils a few minutes it parts with its gases and becomes flat and hard. Pour boiling water into the pot, and let it remain long enough to heat the pot thoroughly; then pour it out, put in the tea, pour over it the quantity of boiling water required, and stand the pot on the back part of the stove for from five to eight minutes, according to the kind of tea used.
Most varieties of teas will be ready in five minutes, but the English breakfast, than which there is no better tea, requires fully eight minutes to extract its full strength. This tea should be placed in a greater heat than any other kind. It should be almost hot enough to boil, but the boiling point should, of course, never be quite reached. The quantity of dry tea to be used for each person depends altogether upon individual taste. The old rule, "a teaspoon of tea for each person and one for the pot," is a good one to follow, and by allowing a generous one-half pint of water for each spoon of tea, a moderately strong brewing is obtained. When several cups of tea are required the proportion of tea may be reduced.
Tea is often made on the table-a tea-kettle with spirit lamp being used to boil the water. This is always the method adopted for Afternoon Tea.
Tea-balls made of silver are also used to put the tea in. The ball is placed in the cup and boiling water poured in. This is not as good a method as using a teapot, for the aroma is lost and the water becomes cold before it extracts the pure essence from the tea leaves.
When tea is served with cream and sugar the sugar should be placed in the cup first, the tea next and lastly the cream.
A method rather than a formula, and most of it still holds. Two of its claims, though, come from period folk chemistry rather than fact.
- The metal-pot warningTannins in tea do not form a "poisonous compound" with tin or enamelled iron. Reactive bare metals such as aluminium or unlined cast iron can give a dull, metallic-tasting brew, which is probably what lay behind the belief; stainless steel, glass, china and earthenware are all fine.
- Water at the first boilThe practical advice is sound. Long or repeated boiling is usually said to drive off dissolved gases and flatten the flavour, though the effect is small and hard to demonstrate; in any case bring fresh cold water just to the boil and use it at once rather than reboiling a kettle that has sat all morning.
- ProportionsA teaspoon per person plus one for the pot, with "a generous one-half pint of water" per spoon, works out to about a cup (8 fl oz) of water per teaspoon of leaf. That is close to, or a little weaker than, modern guidance of roughly one level teaspoon per 6 oz cup -- though the extra spoon "for the pot" pushes the actual brew stronger.
- "The back part of the stove"On a coal or wood range this was the coolest zone, used to hold something hot without cooking it. The modern equivalent is simply a covered pot on the counter under a cosy, or a warmed pot off the heat.
- Steeping times and temperatureFive to eight minutes suits the fully oxidised black teas the book assumes, brewed at just under boiling. Green, white and oolong teas, widely available now and barely acknowledged here, turn bitter under the same treatment; they want cooler water, 160-195F, and two to three minutes.
- Tea ballsThe objection stands. A cramped ball keeps the leaves from expanding and the water in a single cup cools fast, so extraction is thin. A roomy infuser basket or a pot with a wide strainer gives a far better cup.
- Sugar, tea, creamThe order is not fussiness. Sugar dissolves faster in the hot tea, and adding cream last lets the drinker judge the colour and stop where they like.
Butterick's confidence that "there is no better tea" than English breakfast places this squarely in the Anglo-American drawing-room tradition that dominated American tea drinking around 1900, when the market meant black tea, usually from India and Ceylon, which had largely displaced Chinese green in Britain and was gaining ground in the United States. The passage's warning about metal pots reflects a genuine anxiety of the period about tannic acid, then blamed for everything from indigestion to nervous complaints, and the elaborate protocol of Afternoon Tea, spirit lamp and silver tea ball included, sits comfortably with a garment-pattern publisher's readership: such books taught the equipment and choreography of a social ritual as much as a way to brew leaves. The instruction to warm the pot first, and the insistence on freshly drawn water, are long-standing pieces of English tea advice, already repeated in household manuals well before this one.