OT - Tea questions for UK people

[lunalibre]

My DS has to serve tea to his class at school. More precisely, he has to serve tea like it would have been done in upper-class 1920's/1930's England. He knows they had Earl Grey tea back then, so he's making that. Scones have also been around a very long time, and I have a good recipe for those, so I'm making scones. We also think they might have been served with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Is that appropriate? Would the cream have been served cold, or at room temperature?

I was also considering serving the biscuits called "digestives". Would those have been around that long ago? I know we like them but would those have been too commercial/lower-class back then?

Also, we aren't serving a full tea -- just a sample of what it would have been like. His classmates have to bring in food for their own assignments, so he can't bring a lot.

We're being so particular because he's beeing graded on authenticity, and he just hasn't been able to find much information about exactly what would have been eaten then. We just know, for the upper classes, tea was usually served with little cakes and sandwiches and sweets, but we can't find any examples of what those were.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[PollyannaMom]

Hopefully you will get more answers, but just in case, here is a start:

Google "tea in Edwardian England" (This is actually 1901-1910, but close.)

On about the end of the second page of hits, there is an article titled "How to Host and Edwardian Tea Party." It tells about how to cut the sandwiches and everything.

 

[lunalibre]

Thanks for your help! I didn't realize that was the "Edwardian" period. He kept googling dates, which was more helpful in figuring out the fashions and politics of the time than the food.

 

[Alesia]

You could also try posting on the UK community board: http://www.disboards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46

 

[NotUrsula]

My mother was a professional housekeeper in England in the 1930's; I think I can come fairly close to what you need to know, just from things she said and what she did in our home.

Clotted cream would have been kept in an icebox or a cold cupboard; it would have been served a bit colder than room temp, but not cold by modern US standards, probably about 60 F or so.

Recent interpretations of "tea" are way more heavy on the sweets than they would have been 80 years ago, and in any case the English have traditionally not been big on fancy baked goods. (When they want really sweet they tend to go for candy.) What would have been served would depend upon the season. Cress sandwiches on buttered white bread would be very likely at this time of year. These are small crustless sandwiches on buttered bread containing watercress and a form of egg salad known as "egg mayonnaise". They are still quite popular in the UK. Chicken sandwiches might also have been served: white bread with the crusts removed, breast meat sliced fairly thin, salt and pepper, and butter on both slices of the bread. (Real butter. No one in England ate margarine in those days if they had a choice; it was awful.)

Strawberry preserves will do for your scones, or orange marmalade. Use currants in your scones, not raisins. (Soak them before you add them, or they will be like B-B's.)

A good cookie to serve would be something like perhaps a lemon biscuit, essentially a lemon-flavoured sugar cookie. This is the recipe from Mrs. Beeton's cookbook; a British classic that first came out in the 1860's, and was still popular with housekeepers before the war. http://thefoody.com/mrsbbaking/lemonbiscuit.html

While factory-made digestives would be authentic for the time (McVities came out with the chocolate ones in 1925), they probably would not have been served to guests in such a household. The family would probably have eaten them, though; just about everyone did (and does!).

Folks in the UK typically drink tea with milk (NOT cream.) The upper classes tend to add the milk after the tea is poured (though it's better for the tea to put your milk at the bottom of the cup and pour the tea into it.) Remember that in that era you would pour from the pot through a tea strainer into the cup, because the tea was always loose tea.

Young children in such a household would also have had tea, but not normally with their parents on a regular basis. They would have so-called "nursery tea" with a governess or nursemaid, either in their nursery or in the kitchen. Scones with jam would be definitely correct in that context, as would thick buttered toast.

To search these topics, I recommend a library catalog, not Google. The subject heading that you want to use is:
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 1918-1945.

PS: The 1920's to 1930's wasn't the Edwardian period, it was the Interwar Period. The King was George V. The Edwardian Period was the reign of Edward VII -- he died in 1910.

 

[CyndiLooWho]

I think NotUrsula has the best advice. We lived in the Netherlands for 2 yrs and met a lot of British ex-pats. My impression from being in Europe is that an upper class family would never serve pre-made sweets like digestives to visitors over for tea. A servant would prepare those. Even today, Europeans will serve homemade goodies or things purchased that day from the local bakery, not something from the grocery store (yes, they still do a great deal of their shopping at the butcher, the greengrocer, the cheese shop, and the bakery instead of what we would call a grocery store). In the Netherlands, they still do their shopping daily or every other day, as fresh ingredients make the best meals.

The teas I attended were generally plain scones served with clotted cream (cream cheese is a good substitute) and jam, if I was in a tea-room. This is generally referred to as a "cream tea". High tea had tiny cakes and fine sandwiches added, generally on thinly sliced, crustless white bread.