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Russian Tea
This is made by placing a slice of lemon in each cup before pouring in the boiling hot tea. A clove in each cup is a pleasant addition.
Formosa oolong is the most delicate in flavor for iced tea, and should not be too strong. To every quart of tea add the juice of half a lemon. Fill the glasses half full of broken ice and put a thin slice of lemon on top, then pour over the tea, which should be thoroughly chilled.
Two drinks in one entry: hot tea served with lemon in the cup, and a lemon-flavored iced tea. Neither gives leaf quantities, so the strength is left to the cook.
- Strength, since none is givenFor the hot version, brew as you normally would — roughly 1 teaspoon of leaf per cup, steeped 3 to 4 minutes. For the iced version the instruction "should not be too strong" is the operative one: brew at normal strength rather than the double strength often recommended for iced tea, since there is no milk or sugar to carry tannin.
- Formosa oolongFormosa is Taiwan, and the oolongs exported under that name were moderately oxidized or more. A medium-oxidation oolong works; a dark roasted oolong will read as too heavy here.
- Pour hot tea over the lemon, not the reverseThe slice goes into the cup first so the boiling water draws the oil out of the peel, which carries much of the lemon aroma. The recipe does not say why a slice rather than a squeeze is used.
- The cloveThe recipe calls for one clove per cup in the hot version. Clove is assertive, and more than one will dominate the tea.
- Chill fully before it meets the ice"Thoroughly chilled" matters — pouring warm tea over ice melts it and dilutes the glass. Cool the brewed tea, then refrigerate it, then pour. Chilling also brings on the cloudiness typical of black and oolong teas; it is harmless.
- Lemon proportion for iced teaThe juice of half a lemon per quart is about 1 1/2 tablespoons — restrained by modern standards. Taste and add more if you want it forward.
- SugarNone is called for, and lemon without sugar is tart. If you want it sweetened, simple syrup dissolves more readily than granulated sugar in cold tea.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a quart will fill several glasses, depending on their size and how much ice they hold.
"Russian tea" in American cookbooks of this period meant almost nothing about Russia beyond the habit of taking tea with lemon rather than milk — a practice English and American writers associated with the samovar and repeated for decades as shorthand for the style. This version is really a note on lemon in tea, hot and cold, and the iced half reflects a genuinely American enthusiasm: iced tea was already well established by 1900, and it is often said to have been popularized at the 1904 St. Louis exposition, though that story is disputed rather than documented. The recommendation of Formosa oolong is a period marker too. Taiwanese oolong was heavily marketed in the United States in the late nineteenth century and was the fashionable choice for iced tea before cheap Ceylon and Indian black teas took that place. It appears here under "Pickles and Catsups," a placement of the sort not unusual in large composite cookbooks, where beverages, relishes and odds and ends were often swept into the same chapter.