Making Tea
"Polly, put the kettle on, and we'll all take Tea."
Of all "cups that cheer," there is nothing like the smoking-hot cup of tea, made with boiling water, in a thoroughly scalded tea-pot. Put into the pot the required amount of tea, pour over it boiling water, cover the tea-pot so that no steam may escape, and allow the tea to stand and infuse for seven minutes, when it should be poured at once into the cups. If allowed to infuse longer than this time, which is sufficient to draw out the strength of the leaf, the tannin is developed, which gives an acrid, bitter taste, and being a powerful astringent, is destructive to the coating of the stomach. To insure "keeping hot" while serving, in a different tea-pot from that in which the tea is made, the simple contrivance known as the "bonnet" is warranted a sure preventive against that most insipid of all drinks a warmish cup of tea. It is merely a sack, with a loose gathering-tape in the bottom, large enough to cover and encircle the tea-pot, with a small opening to fit the spout, and a slit through which the handle will be exposed. Make it with odd pieces of silk, satin or cashmere, lined, quilted or embroidered ; draw this over the tea-pot as soon as the tea is poured into it; draw up the gathering-string tightly at the bottom, and the tea will remain piping hot for half an hour. One tea-spoon of tea and one tea-cup of hot water is the usual allowance for each person. Freshly boiled soft water is the best for either tea or coffee. Always have a water-pot of hot water on the waiter with which to weaken each cup if desired. Tea should never boil. The most elegant mode of serving tea is from the tea-urn, various forms and designs of which are made in silver and plated ware. The best tea-pot is that which retains heat longest, and this is a bright metal one, as it radiates the least heat, but the metal must be kept bright and polished. Serve both tea and coffee with the best and richest cream, but in the absence of this luxury, a tolerable substitute is prepared as follows: Take fresh, new milk, set in a pan or pail in boiling water where it will slowly simmer, but not boil or reach the boiling point, stir frequently to keep the cream from separating and rising to the top, and allow to simmer until it is rich, thick and creamy. In absence of both cream and milk, the white of an egg beaten to a froth, with a small bit of butter well mixed with it, may be used. In pouring coffee, it must be turned on gradually SO as not to curdle it.
A method rather than a formula, and most of it still holds. The one instruction to revise is the steeping time, which reflects the coarse, heavily fired black teas of the 1880s rather than what is on the shelf now.
- Seven minutes is too longIt may have suited the coarser black teas commonly sold at the time, but it will over-extract most modern leaf. Give a black tea 3-4 minutes, oolong 3-5, and green or white tea 2-3 minutes at 175-185F rather than a full boil.
- The tannin claimLong steeping does develop astringency and bitterness, and that part is accurate. The idea that tea tannin is "destructive to the coating of the stomach" is Victorian medical folklore, not a reason to hurry.
- Scalding the potThis is the hinge of the whole method. A cold pot pulls the water temperature down sharply on contact, and lukewarm water will not extract properly. Swirl boiling water in the pot, tip it out, then add the leaf.
- A tea-cup, not a mugThe nineteenth-century tea-cup held roughly 5 to 6 fluid ounces, not the 8-plus of a modern mug. One teaspoon of leaf is about 2-3 g depending on how tightly it is rolled, so scale up if you are filling large cups.
- Soft waterThe advice is sound. Very hard water flattens the flavour and puts a scum on the surface. Filtered water, freshly drawn and boiled once, gives the cleanest cup; reboiled water is often said to taste duller, though the difference is slight.
- The "bonnet"This is a tea cosy, and it works. Modern practice differs on one point: rather than keeping brewed tea hot on the leaves, decant the tea into a warmed second pot as the text suggests, then cosy that.
- The bright metal potA polished pot does radiate less heat, but a thick earthenware or porcelain pot holds temperature better in practice, and unlined metal can taint the flavour. Any pot you have pre-heated will do.
- The cream substituteSlowly reducing whole milk without letting it boil produces something close to unsweetened evaporated milk, which is the ready-made equivalent. The alternative given, frothed raw egg white with butter, involves uncooked egg and is best left as a historical curiosity.
The opening line is from an English nursery rhyme whose print history is uncertain, with surviving printings dating to the early nineteenth century, and its appearance here signals how thoroughly tea drinking had been domesticated by the time The Dixie Cook-Book appeared in the 1880s. American tea culture was then in transition, though the market remained heavily green-tea, Chinese and Japanese, into the early twentieth century, with Ceylon tea aggressively marketed in the United States only from the 1890s. The elaborate attention to keeping tea hot -- the quilted bonnet made from scraps of silk or cashmere, the silver urn -- belongs to the same period's understanding of the tea table as a piece of household display as much as a drink, presided over by the mistress of the house. The warning against boiling tea, and the insistence on water freshly brought to the boil, are among the oldest pieces of tea advice in English cookery writing.