I'm a coffee drinker, (I hate tea.) But I do love afternoon tea and my daughter treats me on my birthday to a lovely tea at Dobbies Garden Centre. We also treated ourselves to a lovely tea at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath once.
My great aunt, on my dad’s side, would brew a pot of very strong bitter tea when people would visit. For years my mother, who prefers her tea with the bag dipped in hot water for all of 20 seconds, would put on a smile and drink the tea she was served. As a small child I got to stick to cookies. They were often stale, but, at least they were cookies. Eventually, my great aunt visited our home. My mother dutifully brewed a pot of the strongest tea she had ever made. My great aunt politely asked my mom if she could “please have some weaker tea, dear”.
One thing to remember in our time of overabundance is that people drank ale or small beer for breakfast because it was a quick and easy way to get calories. In time period where the food supply was seasonal and food insecurity was a real issue for a large portion of the population, a good housewife kept a supply of ale, beer and/or cider throughout the year to supplement the family's diet. The cow might go dry, the chickens stop laying and the garden go fallow, but the beer, ale and cider were there in the cellar, larder or buttery (the room where the butts were stored, not dairy products) to keep bellies full.
Ah those where the times !!! Beer for breakfast , beer in abundance when you couldn't boil your water to drink .... today those things are enough to sent you to AA o tempora o mores
I have really wondered about these things. I want to know things like how the laundry was done, where the bathroom was, how the bath was taken, who cleaned the bath and how, where the cook lived, and all the details of domestic life are fascinating. It is difficult to envision the events in the books without knowledge of the way life was lived. Thank you.
I have to say I'm fascinated by the day to day as well! I highly recommend you check out Lucy Worsley's "If These Walls Could Talk" series, where she explored the inception of the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom and the living room and how they evolved from the Medieval period to present day. Wildly entertaining and highly informative as well!
If you haven't found them already, a great social historian is Ruth Goodman. She was integral in making a series of videos on various times in history with a group of others, who all focused on day-to-day life. They series is organized by periods. Look her up here on UA-cam. They're fascinating.
@@marigeobrien and when you're done that, you can move on to original sources. My favourites are Mrs Beeton's, the Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and the Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture
Here in England, at least among older generations, tea after dinner is still quite common. We also still have tea gardens here, there's one a few hours from my home
Oh, excellent! The Missouri Botanical Garden near me has a section called a tea garden and now I understand why I can never find actual tea plants there 😅
@@AJaneiteSews Sorry to piggyback on this, but while we're talking about how things are still done in England... First, OP is right I have made tea for my parents every night after dinner (despite not drinking it myself) since I was 11 years old (I'm 22 now). Secondly, I live in the West Midlands, a region of England noted for it's slow changing dialect and accent (i.e. still calling our mothers "mum" a term first documented here in the 13th Century), and despite the content of meals changing over time most of us still refer to the three main meals of the day as "Breakfast, Dinner (lunch) and Tea (dinner)" so we still call the last meal of the day "tea" which I find really interesting (supper is sometimes still eaten, usually by older people who struggle with large meals but is not considered a proper meal more like a late night snack).
@@AJaneiteSews Sigh...I wish we could drink tea at the Botanic Gardens in Washington, DC. They are beautiful and would be a perfect place for tea drinking.
@@kathrynbarton7861, family and regional traditions vary so much in the UK. I grew up mainly in the south and the midlands of England. My family had breakfast, lunch and supper (once us children had later bedtimes. High tea when we were younger and ate before our parents did). I still call my meals by these names though supper is my main meal. Dinner as a main meal was reserved for an evening meal with guests. At school dinner was the midday meal.
My family has always served tea/coffee after dessert at a dinner party with small refreshment snacks such as little chocolates or biscuits. I live in Australia but have a rather English family. If someone asked me to come for tea I wouldn't have a definite idea of what time that would be without clarification, because we take morning tea, afternoon tea, and tea after dinner all as quite common things, as well as sometimes calling the evening meal 'tea'.
I grew up in an Australian family mostly English-derived as well, and we drank tea at all the usual time, but whenever a visitor a would drop in, it was always "put the kettle on" , and we would offer several rounds of tea until the visit concluded. It could get excessive sometimes, if we had multiple visits in a day. 😄
@@AJaneiteSews Here in Germany we have the tradition of "Kaffeetrinken" or "Vesper". In the afternoon, let's say between 2 and 5pm, it is customary to have coffee (or tea or cocoa if you prefer that) and cake (or bisquits or other sweets). In the Christmas time you can have "Christstollen" (a kind of cake) or "Lebkuchen" (a kind of soft, rich gingerbread, often covered in chocolate) at "Kaffeetrinken". The "Kaffeetrinken" has a lot in common with an afternoon teaparty. It's often a social event for which people invite each other, for example you would go to grandma and grandpa for "Kaffeetrinken" on one of the weekend days or you would invite friends or neighbours. We also like to meet in a café with friends for this, or it is used as social gathering event for clubs, societies and associations, or as (part of) a birthday party. This youtuber made a video about it: ua-cam.com/video/9s7otUpWU4A/v-deo.html The formality of "Kaffeetrinken" varies depending on occassion, of course. It's often not as fancy as she describes it, particularly not in the east of Germany. Branded napkins and antique china are not a thing when you just sit together as a family in the afternoon or when the local association of rabbit breeders meets for their monthly gathering. ^ ^
I went to England and struggled to hard to find what we think of "afternoon tea" (meaning, tea and a sweet snack). The places that served Proper "Afternoon Tea" were all usually closed when I was looking, and I got some very strange looks from places (because of my use of the term) that would definitely be stocked for a cake or a muffin in the afternoon in Aus. So embarrassing.
My Aunt Madie was an elegant lady that lived in a beautifully appointed apartment. She served me tea for the first time when I was about 12. Earl Grey with a thin slice of lemon in a bone china cup. I have been hooked ever since.
If you have an extra monitor lying around, a good teleprompter can be pretty easily diy-ed with a picture frame with the backing removed held at an angle to the horizontally lying monitor. Then, you can put your camera behind the clear glass of the frame, and you’ll look like you’re looking right at the camera when you’re reading the prompter! Loved the video! 😊
I usually use it and hear it used to mean "before the pandemic", unless specifically calling out a time "before" something happened or changed. But lately it generally is understood (AFAIK) to mean before the pandemic.
I was inspired to make a cup of tea while I watched this video. Great video. I raise my cup to you! My family is originally Jamaican, so as former British citizens, tea is a daily part of our lives. I grew up starting my day with hot tea or "cocoa tea" (real chocolate) and ending it with tea before bed. My best friend in elementary school (in L.A.) would come to my house before school so that she could get some of my hot cocoa. Between that and the homemade hot breakfast I got every morning, she thought I was living the dream. The most she got was a bowl of cold cereal or a hot pop-tart. (blech!)
I raise my cup to the Empress of tea! Forevermore I plan to refer to dinner (lunch) as noonshine. My grandmother took me to the Japanese Tea Garden and tea house in San Fransisco when I was very young and I have been hooked ever since. I loved seeing the Jane Austen festival tea images you shared and will continue to dream of when I will be able to attend such a congenial gathering. I serve tea at dinner parties with dessert. I generally offer peppermint and Earl Grey. I take mine without any lumps or cream.
Thank you!! Oh, I love mint tea! The Festival is mostly virtual this year, and I’m very excited about it, and I hope it can be in person again in 2022!
because of the shift in meal times and the terms used for it throughout the 19thC it's still common in some parts of the UK that your midday meal gets called dinner and your main evening meal gets called "tea". And certainly older generations, (and at the end of the 20thCetury) some parts of the UK would still have a relatively early "tea" (at about 5:30pm) and then some sort of supper later in the evening. (I associate this with relatively working class northern communities). It honestly has caused me and my digestive system some confusion growing up through a changing era and moving about the UK to have "lunch" be your midday meal and "dinner" be the evening meal and that it occurs later in the evening!
This is exactly how I eat, and I'm 20, Welsh and working class. I'd also add that my dinner is often a larger meal than my tea, and I drink tea with and/or just after every meal. :)
Likewise Ireland in my childhood. Main meal was dinner in the middle of the day. You had a smaller meal at around 6pm, which we called "tea". It"s really only with jobs that required commuting, that people started eating their main meal (dinner) in the evening at home, and had a light meal (lunch) in the middle of the day, at work
I'm embarrassed to admit I only just realized this last year that you can take tea with milk and/or sugar 😖 But now that I've tried it I really like it!
I'm the only one in my family who doesn't drink tea with milk and sugar. I have a variety of tea brews that don't allow for adulteration, and I'm slowly weaning my family into them.
I must applaud all of your research! I sat here taking breakfast with you as you shared this marvelous account!! Thank you so much, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It never occurred to me that all this tea-taking would be out of place during the Regency, but that's because we have so much access to tea now!
Up until the second world war, dinner was served at lunch time. My great grandmother ran a boarding house in country Victoria and the boarders in the country town would come home at 12 and return at 1.00. Shops and banks would close for the hour. So tea (at 6.00) was a natural time and phrase. Often if the children schooled near home would go home for dinner as well.
I currently live in Bahrain where I am still often offered tea when shopping in the souq. But they don't brew it there. If you accept the offer they will send someone down to the nearest little food stall to bring back small cups of mint or karak tea. I'm still trying to understand how they are able to drink boiling hot tea when it is 40 degrees outside.
Fantastic presentation! Quite enjoyed watching and learning as I ate my breakfast and downed my usual two absolutely ENORMOUS mugs of double bergamot Earl Grey. No dainty tea cups for me. One of my favorite afternoon teas was at a hotel in Connecticut where they served asparagus and prosciutto finger sandwiches alongside the more usual sugary cakes and scones, as well as smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches.
i used to make a full "high tea" every year on our anniversary for my ex. did it for 12 years (only missed the 5th anniversary, because he surprised me with a trip to high tea at the ritz in SF) also, the japanese tea garden in SF is one of my favorite places.
If you ever go to Portland, Oregon, visit theirs! Very beautiful, and built on hill, so interesting accommodations were made with paths and garden “rooms”.
I typically say that I am 90% tea by volume! ^.^ I love tea and its history. Thank you for this delightful video! Tea (and coffee) are used as after-dinner digestive aids (I dont know the science behind that, but thats the idea). Though I am with you, caffeine after 5pm is a fast way to mess up my sleep schedule.
I'm lucky enough to live near a living history attraction that has the option of an afternoon tea for visitors and they try to emulate how Clara Ford, wife of Henry Ford, did it. My husband and I had the tea once and it was really good. We also had the little finger sandwiches and desserts.
A very good video. But a correction. Sugar came in cones, wrapped in blue paper. The paper by the way, was kept and soaked to get the blue dye out, so that the ladies could use the dye for whatever purpose they wanted. The" sugar snips" that you've showed. Were used to cut the cone, from the top on down.
There is a deleted scene from Emma (2020) where Emma has a key fastened to her dress and uses it to open a little box where she keeps tealeaves. The servants have prepared everything on a tray but have to wait for Emma to put the leaves in the pot and lock the box before they can start serving her and Harriet. I thought it was such an odd scene but now I understand it. I love finding out details like this from the Regency period. I've seen a lot of praise for the historical accurracy of the costumes in the movie and it seems like they researched other things too.
How I take my tea depends on the tea itself. If it's nice quality, I'll drink it as is and just enjoy the flavor. However, I'm very sensitive to more astringent teas and will either put in cream or some sweetener if the bitterness is too much: sugar and cream or milk if black tea, honey if green or white. Whatever sort I brew it's always with more leaves than recommended. I have no time for weak tea.
This was a very informative video. Thank you. I'd love to see a video dedicated specifically to making the tea at the table, with a special emphasis on the water urns. There is nothing available on that topic anywhere that I can find.
I love to look at a lot more than I like to eat! I’m happy with cucumber sandwiches, hummus and good crackers or veggies, crackers and goat cheese, berries, and almond/coconut cookies!
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and started drinking game hot tea at the Chinese restaurants. To this day I prefer hot tea sweetened with honey.
As a tea-drinking, jane austen reading, period drama watching, history studying brit, this video is perfection! There's a wonderful book called "the biscuit: the history of a British obsession" i think, which goes into the development of victorian afternoon tea and how the Georgians took tea
This is absolutely fascinating, thank you for sharing. In my lifetime in the UK there's a bit of a divide between North and South as to what the different meals should be called, and I can see where the terms might have originated ☕ I'll have milk and 1 sugar please 😊
Thank you for watching! ☺️ The whole dinner vs supper thing was always confusing to me until doing this research. It seems they’ve melded into one in the states!
Dinner is the main meal of the day, so if you have it at noonshine your meals are breakfast, dinner and supper. If you have your main meal in the evening, your meals are breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I never considered the connection between sugar and the slave trade back then. Was there a point where ethically sourced sugar became a thing much like fair trade coffee and chocolate today? Hmmm, an interesting subject for some personal investigation in the future. Thank you for mentioning it. 😊
Looking at an article on www.world-foodhistory.com, I'd say the only possible source of cane sugar that wouldn't have been touched by colonialism or slavery in some way would possibly be southern Spain? But I don't know how widely it was produced or exported. Looking into sugar beets, the first factory to refine sugar from them was in Poland in 1801, but it wasn't until after the Napoleonic Wars (ironically, because England blockaded European imports from the West Indies) that Europe turned to sugar beets, so really wouldn't have been an option for late 18th/early 19th century England. Carrie shows a cartoon with an "anti-saccharite" and I am inclined to think that the more expedient option would be to teetotal white sugar entirely or, if a sweetener was needed, then honey (molasses and treacle would similarly be produced by enslaved people).
It was called the Triangular Trade - sugar & molasses (and tobacco and later, cotton) were picked up in the Caribbean and other colonies, turned into rum and finished goods (cloth) in the UK, then shipped to west Africa to be traded for slaves, who were taken to the Caribbean and other colonies. I suspect that if one were inclined to dig into the histories of every important family in Britain, they would all have slave trading in their history.
@@counter10r Sugar beet sugar was common, but not that exactly popular. 5 or 6 large sugar beets can be boiled down to about 2 kilos of beet sugar. As I recall, this didn't become a popular alternative to cane sugar until the first world War due to reduced availability for cane sugar. My great grandmother, an avid tea drinker her entire life, is the one who taught me how to make beet sugar. It's a slog, it's a very laborious undertaking for very little reward, but when you need sugar for your tea, you'll do it. She also told me that duck eggs were better for making desserts and pastries because they have a more buttery flavour and texture, for the same reason that chicken eggs were difficult to obtain in wartime because as much food as possible was dried, smoked, salted, pickled or tinned and sent to the front. I could not tell you how old beet sugar is, but from listening to her, I would say that among the farming class of the Victorian and Edwardian era, it was already known to be a viable alternative.
In Germany the practice of afternoon tea is still common in North Frisia. They also drink tea in the evening after dinner. It's quite funny because culturally they basically british (at least with their tea culture). :)
I am more of a coffee, infusion, tizane person. Actual black tea is too much. Red or white, I like. Green is ok.. In Venezuela, we call it guarapo, and there was a tea shop I liked called "El guarapo ingles"(The english guarapo), which had proper teas. It was all rather strange for me the first few times I tried it since we only knew of chamomile or weaker stuff like that. My grandma would make me lemongrass infusion when I was sick, and to this day, I love any infusion that includes it.
I found your videos no earlier than yesterday, and I am delighted by the near-exhaustivity of the informations you give. A small tip for the pronunciation of "desservir", the double ss is pronounced like a "hard s", like in supper ^^
Very interesting. That opened up a whole new area of 'interesting trivia' (which I collect like a magpie collects shiny objects) for me. I'm German and we're more of a coffee drinking nation...and I used to think, 'tea' meant a little snack and a cup of something hot in the afternoon in England. I had no idea, there was such an extensive and interesting history behind 'tea' and the other various meals. In Germany, we traditionally used to eat our main (hot) meal at around 1-2pm as well, btw. Although this isn't a hard and fast rule anymore, what with hardly any stay at home moms and school often extending into the afternoon now. But when I was a kid in the 80s/90s, most kids still got a home cooked meal right after school and it would be sandwiches or cereal in the evening. Although there were usually leftovers for the dad, of course. But then we love our bread here, so we don't mind eating it twice a day at all 😉 I've always stuck with this routine myself and find it preferable, to eating heavy in the evening. Can't imagine, how these people got a proper nights rest with such a full belly and cofeine on top of that 👀
I have a small ceramic plaque on the door of my home office with the first part of that Johnson quote on it. I take mine made from Assam tea, nice and strong with a dash of milk and no sugar, thanks!
Tea time for me is between 15:30 and 16:30 and I usually have a sandwich or a sweet, sometimes even granola, fruits and joghurt with it. It's basically an afternoon snack with some caffeine to keep me going made fancy to lighten my mood
I was just listening to the Regency romance novel The Summer of You by Kate Noble and the aurhor included a nice little scene. The hero's aunt left him her house and the heroine's family is the local nobility. When he learns the heroine used to visit his aunt and drink jasmine tea, he gifts her the box. IIRC there is also a mention of some of the teas going bad which I took to mean that those teas were hoarded and maybe not drunk fast enough by an older lady living alone with servants. The other detail that stuck out was that the house was bequeated but not the land around it. Supposedly, the aunt was the noble grandfather's "particular friend" so he had the house built for her but on entailed or family land, I guess. Is there something like that in Austen?
Oh, interesting! Tea can lose its flavor after... years, I guess? There are no entailments in Austen that don’t include everything on the property, so that’s an intriguing question about whether the house itself would be seen as separate, an island in a property belonging to someone else... I had jasmine tea earlier. It is one of my faves!
You were right about a tea garden, it's not only a garden where tea is 'taken', but also the correct term for the fields where it is grown, also hops (for beer) are grown in a hop 'garden' rather than a hop field. It would have been roughly around the time of Jane's birth that tea cups with handles became a thing, before that tea was served in a small handless cup sitting in a deep saucer, and it was normal to tip a small amount at a time into the saucer to allow it to cool more quickly and then sip it from the saucer. You'll come across references in Georgian novels to taking a 'dish' of tea rather than a 'cup'. Now I'm typing this I remember a few old (and rather uncouth) people still doing that during my childhood in Scotland the 1970s.
In Russia we associate tea-drinking with England. I would say that Russians are gib tea lovers and many people if not most drink loose tea. Tea bags is something for students, many here think. Most cafes, all restaurants serve loose tea in a teapot here. Probably, one of the greatest disappointments of Russians travelling to England is to be served tea in a form of a teabag. We have a whole hoo-hah for teas - tea pots, kettles, teapot warmers, strainers etc. When borders are open again, do come to Moscow or St Petersburg for tea experiences :-) And thank you for a lovely video!
I'm coming a bit late to the table, but as a tea drinker since the age of 14, I had to chime in. I also started watching Masterpiece Theater and PBS Mystery! at about the same time. Though I live in Southern California, my Paternal Grandfather was born in Nottingham, England. I am an Anglophile, indeed. While it is fictionalized, the film Amazing Grace with Ioan Gruffudd illustrates William Wilberforce's fight against the slave trade and the boycotts of sugar. My usual teas are Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Gold with 2% milk (no sugar) to wake me up in the morning, and Numi Gunpowder Green or Ahmad Darjeeling with milk for the afternoon. I was quite thrilled when the local International market opened; they have an entire aisle devoted to tea, and sell samovars as well as the decorative tins I can't stop buying. So far all of your topics are on point for me! Look forward to watching more.
I prefer tea the western way when I’m alone or having a quick lunch with someone. I only put cream or sugar sometimes in the winter, since I hate hot cocoa. When I want to have a relaxing or social time with friends, I drink gong fu! It’s hard to drink it alone, but it’s really great for lowering anxiety.
Twinings teas are very good, I especially like the Darjeeling. However Earl Grey reminded me of hair oil my grandmother would put on our hair, it had bergamont in it.
I don't drink tea often, but I do drink honey and lemon in hot water lol. I love high tea spreads with yummy pastries and cream. A couple hotels did them in the before times and it was a fun excuse to dress up. So I guess tea is a social thing for me.
Oh, yes, high tea is such a lovely experience! The word tea I believe comes from “tisanes” which are herbal brews used long before those leaves from China were introduced in England, and lemon and honey should count!
My mother, first a public health nurse, then a psychiatric nurse, could not take the caffeine, even in "decaffeinated" tea or coffee during the work day. Eventually, she just took a mug of hot water to keep hydrated.
@@AJaneiteSews I think the word "tea" is of Chinese origin also, but from a different dialect than the one that "cha" comes from. Cogito has an interesting video about it.
@@AJaneiteSews The word tea actually comes from the Chinese word for tea, 茶, as opposed to the word tisane, which comes from either Greek or French, I believe. The two words are not cognates.
From Jane's letters it seems she did not like cream in her tea, but probably only took it with sugar. In one of her letters she compliments an acquaintance on the pleasing trait of taking "no cream in her Tea."
Morning tea is the most common for me, followed by afternoon tea. I am sensitive to caffeine, so if I drinks any in the evening, I need decaffeinated tea. Luckily these days it exists. Otherwise I may drink hot chocolate in the evening. I only learned to like tea as an adult. The key factor was adding fresh lemon in the tea. That's my preferred addition to black tea. Then I found out green tea and how to make it good, not bitter. It won over black tea 6-1. Good green tea is fine as it is, I don't usually add anything to it (though some loose leaf blends with, say, cherry are delicious too.) But then there are some unfortunate cheap (black) teas that I can only get down with almost 50% milk and some sugar.
I belong to two women's discussion groups that meet midafternoon. A paper and discussion are followed by tea, coffee, and snacks, usually three savory and three sweet. We are debating whether to cut down on the snacks, as there are usually a lot left over.
I am form a country where tea isn't a big deal but I am almost addicted to it and I drink it in the morning no matter the season (past 3 in the afternoon, I prefer decaffeinated tea or herbal infusions). And I drink mostly black tea with citrus and a lot of sugar.
I take my tea black, fairly weak, occasionally with a squeeze of lemon. We Australians of course inherited our love of tea from our mainly British forbears, but coffee has taken over well and truly now. The quintessential 'Aussie' brew is 'billy tea', made by boiling water in a billy (not sure what it would be called elsewhere but it's a straight sided tin with a handle) over a campfire, then throwing in a handful of tea leaves and letting it brew until it's the colour of tar (almost). It's drunk without milk of course, unless you have some powdered or condensed milk in your swag 😁
The ceremony of the tea. Does milk go in first? Should we use a tea pot or tea bags? What a bonus, fortune in the spent leaves. The tea dance. The hiatus, waiting for the tea to brew. Porcelain or china. The improvement in tea tating derived from order, etiquette. Add a cake and observe how they were meant for each other. Dunking a biscuit, beautifully elicit. Doilies, the cake stand. sugar cubes and tweezers; "shall I be mum", the dedignated pourer. Coffee does not stand a chance.
This was so well researched. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. I do have more questions about the tea rooms. At what time of day would the ladies frequent them?
So I’m basically Samuel Johnson, but with coffee. My brother once counted the number of coffees I had per day, for a week. He determined that I never had less than five, and my highest number was 10. For an average of 7 per day. It’s a good thing caffeine doesn’t affect me the same way as most. I can have a coffee immediately before bed, and it affects my sleep not at all. I also never get jittery. It’s something I inherited from my mother, likely connected to the ADHD she also passed along. I find that caffeine is wonderful to self medicate my ADHD with. I concentrate better, and am less fidgety. My doctor thinks that the caffeine works on me in much the same way as amphetamines- which is to say, in quite the opposite way that they do on most people. Which is why most ADHD medications are amphetamine based. But as I’m not keen on adding yet another strong drug to my pile of daily medications, I stick with plenty of coffee. Tea does also work, as it contains caffeine, but not quite as well, and I prefer the taste of coffee anyway. I wonder if Samuel was similar to me, and found a constant stream of caffeine throughout the day to be soothing and helpful for focus? Of course the one downside to the way my peculiar body chemistry interacts with caffeine, is that it doesn’t wake me up quite as well as it does others. Though the morning routine of coffee itself helps, even if I don’t get a nice little caffeine kickstart.
That is very interesting! Perhaps you are right about Samuel Johnson. He was very productive! My son has ADHD, and has yet to try a caffeinated beverage. Perhaps it’s time!
When I was student teaching, during morning recess one of the teachers would get a cup of coffee to take to a student of hers with ADHD. It helped them, and I’ve always remembered that.
wow that's a big tea cup! did the average size vary over time? i have some tea cups and they're kinda...tiny. i think i got it in a dishes set while in college. i like the idea of a bigger cup..makes more sense for minimizing labor 🙂
Very interesting about gentry class + tea. Could you next explain other classes--- wealthy capitalists (probably.copied gentry?), small business, professionals?,
No, modern marmalade existed by the early 1700's, and it was a normal.part of a Recency breakfast, at least for the upper and middle class. It was within the means of some lower class people, either made at home.or store bought.
I'm way more into Georgette Heyer than Jane Austen but all this regency knowledge helps put many things into context. I'm a bit of a tea philistine as I only really drink decaf earl grey, with milk and honey, these days as any more caffeine triggers migraines. Still, tea drinking is entirely entrenched in English culture and where I live there are many tea gardens, or tea rooms, which are basically really quaint cafes.
Lovely piece, very good. Just to mention, as a Brit, you would never refer to sir Thomas Bertram without the Thomas. Titles are notoriously complicated and finicky, To keep us plebs in our place, just ‘Sir’ as we grovel.
I'm not here because I'm a Bridgerton or Austen fan. I'm here because I'm a tea fan :)
Same. Pinkies up.
I feel Dr Johnsons quote. My kettle barely stops boiling.
Same here!
Same
I'm a coffee drinker, (I hate tea.) But I do love afternoon tea and my daughter treats me on my birthday to a lovely tea at Dobbies Garden Centre. We also treated ourselves to a lovely tea at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath once.
My great aunt, on my dad’s side, would brew a pot of very strong bitter tea when people would visit. For years my mother, who prefers her tea with the bag dipped in hot water for all of 20 seconds, would put on a smile and drink the tea she was served.
As a small child I got to stick to cookies. They were often stale, but, at least they were cookies.
Eventually, my great aunt visited our home. My mother dutifully brewed a pot of the strongest tea she had ever made.
My great aunt politely asked my mom if she could “please have some weaker tea, dear”.
this sounds like a parable.
Sounds like tea duel!
"'Susan, some people may be able to drink stewed tea but I am not in that fortunate class.'" - Anne of Ingleside
One thing to remember in our time of overabundance is that people drank ale or small beer for breakfast because it was a quick and easy way to get calories. In time period where the food supply was seasonal and food insecurity was a real issue for a large portion of the population, a good housewife kept a supply of ale, beer and/or cider throughout the year to supplement the family's diet. The cow might go dry, the chickens stop laying and the garden go fallow, but the beer, ale and cider were there in the cellar, larder or buttery (the room where the butts were stored, not dairy products) to keep bellies full.
They also drank Ale instead of water because it was unsafe to drink.
Ah those where the times !!! Beer for breakfast , beer in abundance when you couldn't boil your water to drink .... today those things are enough to sent you to AA o tempora o mores
How dreadful!
I have really wondered about these things. I want to know things like how the laundry was done, where the bathroom was, how the bath was taken, who cleaned the bath and how, where the cook lived, and all the details of domestic life are fascinating. It is difficult to envision the events in the books without knowledge of the way life was lived. Thank you.
I have to say I'm fascinated by the day to day as well! I highly recommend you check out Lucy Worsley's "If These Walls Could Talk" series, where she explored the inception of the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom and the living room and how they evolved from the Medieval period to present day. Wildly entertaining and highly informative as well!
If you haven't found them already, a great social historian is Ruth Goodman. She was integral in making a series of videos on various times in history with a group of others, who all focused on day-to-day life. They series is organized by periods. Look her up here on UA-cam. They're fascinating.
@@marigeobrien and when you're done that, you can move on to original sources. My favourites are Mrs Beeton's, the Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and the Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture
Not in Front of the Servants by Frank Dawes is really interesting! :)
Look up Townsend's here on YT. They cover 18th century life, and early 19th. They do demonstrations while wearing authentic clothing.
Here in England, at least among older generations, tea after dinner is still quite common. We also still have tea gardens here, there's one a few hours from my home
Oh, excellent! The Missouri Botanical Garden near me has a section called a tea garden and now I understand why I can never find actual tea plants there 😅
@@AJaneiteSews Sorry to piggyback on this, but while we're talking about how things are still done in England... First, OP is right I have made tea for my parents every night after dinner (despite not drinking it myself) since I was 11 years old (I'm 22 now). Secondly, I live in the West Midlands, a region of England noted for it's slow changing dialect and accent (i.e. still calling our mothers "mum" a term first documented here in the 13th Century), and despite the content of meals changing over time most of us still refer to the three main meals of the day as "Breakfast, Dinner (lunch) and Tea (dinner)" so we still call the last meal of the day "tea" which I find really interesting (supper is sometimes still eaten, usually by older people who struggle with large meals but is not considered a proper meal more like a late night snack).
@@AJaneiteSews Sigh...I wish we could drink tea at the Botanic Gardens in Washington, DC. They are beautiful and would be a perfect place for tea drinking.
@@kathrynbarton7861, family and regional traditions vary so much in the UK. I grew up mainly in the south and the midlands of England. My family had breakfast, lunch and supper (once us children had later bedtimes. High tea when we were younger and ate before our parents did). I still call my meals by these names though supper is my main meal. Dinner as a main meal was reserved for an evening meal with guests. At school dinner was the midday meal.
My family still do this because our grandparents on my mum's side loved it so much. And so do I! 😂 We have the option of coffee too.
My family has always served tea/coffee after dessert at a dinner party with small refreshment snacks such as little chocolates or biscuits. I live in Australia but have a rather English family. If someone asked me to come for tea I wouldn't have a definite idea of what time that would be without clarification, because we take morning tea, afternoon tea, and tea after dinner all as quite common things, as well as sometimes calling the evening meal 'tea'.
I’m all for tea all the time! (Might just have to switch to herbal or decaf in the evening...) Thank you for sharing!
I grew up in an Australian family mostly English-derived as well, and we drank tea at all the usual time, but whenever a visitor a would drop in, it was always "put the kettle on" , and we would offer several rounds of tea until the visit concluded. It could get excessive sometimes, if we had multiple visits in a day. 😄
@@AJaneiteSews Here in Germany we have the tradition of "Kaffeetrinken" or "Vesper".
In the afternoon, let's say between 2 and 5pm, it is customary to have coffee (or tea or cocoa if you prefer that) and cake (or bisquits or other sweets).
In the Christmas time you can have "Christstollen" (a kind of cake) or "Lebkuchen" (a kind of soft, rich gingerbread, often covered in chocolate) at "Kaffeetrinken".
The "Kaffeetrinken" has a lot in common with an afternoon teaparty. It's often a social event for which people invite each other, for example you would go to grandma and grandpa for "Kaffeetrinken" on one of the weekend days or you would invite friends or neighbours.
We also like to meet in a café with friends for this, or it is used as social gathering event for clubs, societies and associations, or as (part of) a birthday party.
This youtuber made a video about it: ua-cam.com/video/9s7otUpWU4A/v-deo.html
The formality of "Kaffeetrinken" varies depending on occassion, of course. It's often not as fancy as she describes it, particularly not in the east of Germany. Branded napkins and antique china are not a thing when you just sit together as a family in the afternoon or when the local association of rabbit breeders meets for their monthly gathering. ^ ^
I went to England and struggled to hard to find what we think of "afternoon tea" (meaning, tea and a sweet snack). The places that served Proper "Afternoon Tea" were all usually closed when I was looking, and I got some very strange looks from places (because of my use of the term) that would definitely be stocked for a cake or a muffin in the afternoon in Aus. So embarrassing.
My Aunt Madie was an elegant lady that lived in a beautifully appointed apartment. She served me tea for the first time when I was about 12. Earl Grey with a thin slice of lemon in a bone china cup. I have been hooked ever since.
If you have an extra monitor lying around, a good teleprompter can be pretty easily diy-ed with a picture frame with the backing removed held at an angle to the horizontally lying monitor. Then, you can put your camera behind the clear glass of the frame, and you’ll look like you’re looking right at the camera when you’re reading the prompter! Loved the video! 😊
Depends on the tea. Honey and lemon with earl grey, milk and sugar for black teas, and a touch of honey for green teas. Love videos!
I like that phrase “in the before times.” But I’m confused as to whether it means “in the olden days” or “before the pandemic!”
LOL! I use it to denote pre-COVID-19 pandemic!
not olden times but before dinner
I usually use it and hear it used to mean "before the pandemic", unless specifically calling out a time "before" something happened or changed. But lately it generally is understood (AFAIK) to mean before the pandemic.
I was inspired to make a cup of tea while I watched this video. Great video. I raise my cup to you! My family is originally Jamaican, so as former British citizens, tea is a daily part of our lives. I grew up starting my day with hot tea or "cocoa tea" (real chocolate) and ending it with tea before bed. My best friend in elementary school (in L.A.) would come to my house before school so that she could get some of my hot cocoa. Between that and the homemade hot breakfast I got every morning, she thought I was living the dream. The most she got was a bowl of cold cereal or a hot pop-tart. (blech!)
Thank you! And thank you for sharing! “Cocoa tea”, I love it! And I totally agree, blech to pop tarts! It’s porridge and tea for me!
I saw this right after I made myself my nightly cup of Valerian root tea so it seemed fitting💕
We need tea gardens now. Would certainly cheer me up.
Wow, thanks. Makes enjoying Austin so much more fun to know something about the genuine texture of people's lives back then.
I raise my cup to the Empress of tea! Forevermore I plan to refer to dinner (lunch) as noonshine. My grandmother took me to the Japanese Tea Garden and tea house in San Fransisco when I was very young and I have been hooked ever since. I loved seeing the Jane Austen festival tea images you shared and will continue to dream of when I will be able to attend such a congenial gathering. I serve tea at dinner parties with dessert. I generally offer peppermint and Earl Grey. I take mine without any lumps or cream.
Thank you!! Oh, I love mint tea! The Festival is mostly virtual this year, and I’m very excited about it, and I hope it can be in person again in 2022!
I read somewhere that Catherine of Braganza popularized it when she came to England, when she married Charles II.
My grandmother got me into drinking tea. I love a good black tea with milk and sugar but I can only drink it sparingly
because of the shift in meal times and the terms used for it throughout the 19thC it's still common in some parts of the UK that your midday meal gets called dinner and your main evening meal gets called "tea". And certainly older generations, (and at the end of the 20thCetury) some parts of the UK would still have a relatively early "tea" (at about 5:30pm) and then some sort of supper later in the evening. (I associate this with relatively working class northern communities).
It honestly has caused me and my digestive system some confusion growing up through a changing era and moving about the UK to have "lunch" be your midday meal and "dinner" be the evening meal and that it occurs later in the evening!
Oh, my, so interesting! I’d end up being a hobbit and just eating all day 😅
This is exactly how I eat, and I'm 20, Welsh and working class. I'd also add that my dinner is often a larger meal than my tea, and I drink tea with and/or just after every meal. :)
Likewise Ireland in my childhood. Main meal was dinner in the middle of the day. You had a smaller meal at around 6pm, which we called "tea". It"s really only with jobs that required commuting, that people started eating their main meal (dinner) in the evening at home, and had a light meal (lunch) in the middle of the day, at work
I'm embarrassed to admit I only just realized this last year that you can take tea with milk and/or sugar 😖 But now that I've tried it I really like it!
Wait until you try tea with a slice of lemon! Depends on the type of tea though :)
I'm the only one in my family who doesn't drink tea with milk and sugar. I have a variety of tea brews that don't allow for adulteration, and I'm slowly weaning my family into them.
I must applaud all of your research! I sat here taking breakfast with you as you shared this marvelous account!! Thank you so much, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It never occurred to me that all this tea-taking would be out of place during the Regency, but that's because we have so much access to tea now!
Thank you!!
Growing up in New Zealand, a British Commonwealth country, the evening meal was called 'tea'. "What are we having for tea, mum?" was a common question
Same here in Australia!
Up until the second world war, dinner was served at lunch time. My great grandmother ran a boarding house in country Victoria and the boarders in the country town would come home at 12 and return at 1.00. Shops and banks would close for the hour. So tea (at 6.00) was a natural time and phrase. Often if the children schooled near home would go home for dinner as well.
I currently live in Bahrain where I am still often offered tea when shopping in the souq. But they don't brew it there. If you accept the offer they will send someone down to the nearest little food stall to bring back small cups of mint or karak tea. I'm still trying to understand how they are able to drink boiling hot tea when it is 40 degrees outside.
Well done. This was very informative about the Regency Era and tea.
Great video! I’m pretty sure that I might actually be addicted to tea, I don’t function without it!
Same, girl. SAME.
My husband and me, too, for sure!
Fantastic presentation! Quite enjoyed watching and learning as I ate my breakfast and downed my usual two absolutely ENORMOUS mugs of double bergamot Earl Grey. No dainty tea cups for me.
One of my favorite afternoon teas was at a hotel in Connecticut where they served asparagus and prosciutto finger sandwiches alongside the more usual sugary cakes and scones, as well as smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches.
Thank you! I, too, love the savory offerings at high teas. Cucumber sandwiches are my favorite!
I (UK) have been offered tea in a shop while I decided whether or not to buy something.
That happened to us in China.
I'm just glad one had a very late dinner! Plus watching this after the shops have closed is a real bummer as you cannot get to the cakes!
Oh, no! 😅
This was so much fun to watch, and I learned a lot! Now to go put the kettle on . . .
Thank you for watching!! It was fun to research for this video!
Eleanor Rust - Me, too! Is it a good time for tea?
i used to make a full "high tea" every year on our anniversary for my ex. did it for 12 years (only missed the 5th anniversary, because he surprised me with a trip to high tea at the ritz in SF)
also, the japanese tea garden in SF is one of my favorite places.
If you ever go to Portland, Oregon, visit theirs! Very beautiful, and built on hill, so interesting accommodations were made with paths and garden “rooms”.
I typically say that I am 90% tea by volume! ^.^ I love tea and its history. Thank you for this delightful video! Tea (and coffee) are used as after-dinner digestive aids (I dont know the science behind that, but thats the idea). Though I am with you, caffeine after 5pm is a fast way to mess up my sleep schedule.
Hahaha!! Yes! I’m at least 50% tea at any given moment, I think 😆
I'm lucky enough to live near a living history attraction that has the option of an afternoon tea for visitors and they try to emulate how Clara Ford, wife of Henry Ford, did it. My husband and I had the tea once and it was really good. We also had the little finger sandwiches and desserts.
A very good video. But a correction. Sugar came in cones, wrapped in blue paper. The paper by the way, was kept and soaked to get the blue dye out, so that the ladies could use the dye for whatever purpose they wanted. The" sugar snips" that you've showed. Were used to cut the cone, from the top on down.
There is a deleted scene from Emma (2020) where Emma has a key fastened to her dress and uses it to open a little box where she keeps tealeaves. The servants have prepared everything on a tray but have to wait for Emma to put the leaves in the pot and lock the box before they can start serving her and Harriet. I thought it was such an odd scene but now I understand it. I love finding out details like this from the Regency period. I've seen a lot of praise for the historical accurracy of the costumes in the movie and it seems like they researched other things too.
Here is the clip: ua-cam.com/video/0om7QP-sRCA/v-deo.html
How I take my tea depends on the tea itself. If it's nice quality, I'll drink it as is and just enjoy the flavor. However, I'm very sensitive to more astringent teas and will either put in cream or some sweetener if the bitterness is too much: sugar and cream or milk if black tea, honey if green or white. Whatever sort I brew it's always with more leaves than recommended. I have no time for weak tea.
This was a very informative video. Thank you. I'd love to see a video dedicated specifically to making the tea at the table, with a special emphasis on the water urns. There is nothing available on that topic anywhere that I can find.
I'd love to see what your ideal tea time finger foods would be.
I love to look at a lot more than I like to eat! I’m happy with cucumber sandwiches, hummus and good crackers or veggies, crackers and goat cheese, berries, and almond/coconut cookies!
What a thorough survey of how and when tea was taken! I just finished a cup of tea and now I want another!!
That is an absolutely enormous teacup!! XD
😆😆 A student gave the set to me. It has Pusheen as a stegosaurus on the outside and says “Tea Rex” on the inside, lol.
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and started drinking game hot tea at the Chinese restaurants. To this day I prefer hot tea sweetened with honey.
Not sure what I typed to get “game hot tea” it should just be “hot tea”.
@@honoraweaver788 You didn’t find honey at Chinese restaurants, did you?
No, it was just plain hot tea at the restaurants.
As a tea-drinking, jane austen reading, period drama watching, history studying brit, this video is perfection!
There's a wonderful book called "the biscuit: the history of a British obsession" i think, which goes into the development of victorian afternoon tea and how the Georgians took tea
I came for tea, but I'm subscribing for all the rest. I really appreciate all the research that has been put into this.
This is absolutely fascinating, thank you for sharing. In my lifetime in the UK there's a bit of a divide between North and South as to what the different meals should be called, and I can see where the terms might have originated ☕ I'll have milk and 1 sugar please 😊
Thank you for watching! ☺️ The whole dinner vs supper thing was always confusing to me until doing this research. It seems they’ve melded into one in the states!
We have tea time for the evening meal in the North, just to add extra confusion 😂
Dinner is the main meal of the day, so if you have it at noonshine your meals are breakfast, dinner and supper. If you have your main meal in the evening, your meals are breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I never considered the connection between sugar and the slave trade back then. Was there a point where ethically sourced sugar became a thing much like fair trade coffee and chocolate today? Hmmm, an interesting subject for some personal investigation in the future. Thank you for mentioning it. 😊
Looking at an article on www.world-foodhistory.com, I'd say the only possible source of cane sugar that wouldn't have been touched by colonialism or slavery in some way would possibly be southern Spain? But I don't know how widely it was produced or exported. Looking into sugar beets, the first factory to refine sugar from them was in Poland in 1801, but it wasn't until after the Napoleonic Wars (ironically, because England blockaded European imports from the West Indies) that Europe turned to sugar beets, so really wouldn't have been an option for late 18th/early 19th century England. Carrie shows a cartoon with an "anti-saccharite" and I am inclined to think that the more expedient option would be to teetotal white sugar entirely or, if a sweetener was needed, then honey (molasses and treacle would similarly be produced by enslaved people).
Thank you for that link Ron. I’ll check it out.
It was called the Triangular Trade - sugar & molasses (and tobacco and later, cotton) were picked up in the Caribbean and other colonies, turned into rum and finished goods (cloth) in the UK, then shipped to west Africa to be traded for slaves, who were taken to the Caribbean and other colonies. I suspect that if one were inclined to dig into the histories of every important family in Britain, they would all have slave trading in their history.
@@counter10r
Sugar beet sugar was common, but not that exactly popular. 5 or 6 large sugar beets can be boiled down to about 2 kilos of beet sugar. As I recall, this didn't become a popular alternative to cane sugar until the first world War due to reduced availability for cane sugar. My great grandmother, an avid tea drinker her entire life, is the one who taught me how to make beet sugar. It's a slog, it's a very laborious undertaking for very little reward, but when you need sugar for your tea, you'll do it.
She also told me that duck eggs were better for making desserts and pastries because they have a more buttery flavour and texture, for the same reason that chicken eggs were difficult to obtain in wartime because as much food as possible was dried, smoked, salted, pickled or tinned and sent to the front.
I could not tell you how old beet sugar is, but from listening to her, I would say that among the farming class of the Victorian and Edwardian era, it was already known to be a viable alternative.
In Germany the practice of afternoon tea is still common in North Frisia. They also drink tea in the evening after dinner. It's quite funny because culturally they basically british (at least with their tea culture). :)
Thanks for sharing!!
I am more of a coffee, infusion, tizane person. Actual black tea is too much. Red or white, I like. Green is ok..
In Venezuela, we call it guarapo, and there was a tea shop I liked called "El guarapo ingles"(The english guarapo), which had proper teas. It was all rather strange for me the first few times I tried it since we only knew of chamomile or weaker stuff like that.
My grandma would make me lemongrass infusion when I was sick, and to this day, I love any infusion that includes it.
Thank you for sharing!
What a fun and informative video! Thoroughly enjoyed this. I have tea in the afternoons, it’s civilizing. Long Live Jane Austen. 💐💕
Congrats for this video blowing up! Your channel deserves more recognition and subscribers 😊
Thank you so much!! 💚
I only drink tea while watching period dramas. So everyday!
This was really interesting! Please do more.
Thank you so much for this! It was really enjoyable and informative :)
I found your videos no earlier than yesterday, and I am delighted by the near-exhaustivity of the informations you give.
A small tip for the pronunciation of "desservir", the double ss is pronounced like a "hard s", like in supper ^^
Very interesting. That opened up a whole new area of 'interesting trivia' (which I collect like a magpie collects shiny objects) for me.
I'm German and we're more of a coffee drinking nation...and I used to think, 'tea' meant a little snack and a cup of something hot in the afternoon in England. I had no idea, there was such an extensive and interesting history behind 'tea' and the other various meals.
In Germany, we traditionally used to eat our main (hot) meal at around 1-2pm as well, btw. Although this isn't a hard and fast rule anymore, what with hardly any stay at home moms and school often extending into the afternoon now.
But when I was a kid in the 80s/90s, most kids still got a home cooked meal right after school and it would be sandwiches or cereal in the evening.
Although there were usually leftovers for the dad, of course. But then we love our bread here, so we don't mind eating it twice a day at all 😉
I've always stuck with this routine myself and find it preferable, to eating heavy in the evening. Can't imagine, how these people got a proper nights rest with such a full belly and cofeine on top of that 👀
I like Earl Grey tea and Ceylon Orange Pekoe best. I drink both without sugar or milk. I usually have blended black teas with a little of cream.
Gentlemen would carve and serve their NEIGHBOURS?! 😨 (Kidding but I did have to do a double take there!)
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Spilling the tea on tea. We are here for it.
I have a small ceramic plaque on the door of my home office with the first part of that Johnson quote on it. I take mine made from Assam tea, nice and strong with a dash of milk and no sugar, thanks!
Thanks for sharing your research with us! I enjoyed how informative this was while drinking tea of course! 😊
I love these lectures! I owe too much on student loans to go back and study this so I’m really happy for these!
I drink bagged vanilla chai with coconut milk.
Tea time for me is between 15:30 and 16:30 and I usually have a sandwich or a sweet, sometimes even granola, fruits and joghurt with it. It's basically an afternoon snack with some caffeine to keep me going made fancy to lighten my mood
Thanks for sharing!!
I was just listening to the Regency romance novel The Summer of You by Kate Noble and the aurhor included a nice little scene. The hero's aunt left him her house and the heroine's family is the local nobility. When he learns the heroine used to visit his aunt and drink jasmine tea, he gifts her the box. IIRC there is also a mention of some of the teas going bad which I took to mean that those teas were hoarded and maybe not drunk fast enough by an older lady living alone with servants. The other detail that stuck out was that the house was bequeated but not the land around it. Supposedly, the aunt was the noble grandfather's "particular friend" so he had the house built for her but on entailed or family land, I guess. Is there something like that in Austen?
Oh, interesting! Tea can lose its flavor after... years, I guess? There are no entailments in Austen that don’t include everything on the property, so that’s an intriguing question about whether the house itself would be seen as separate, an island in a property belonging to someone else... I had jasmine tea earlier. It is one of my faves!
You were right about a tea garden, it's not only a garden where tea is 'taken', but also the correct term for the fields where it is grown, also hops (for beer) are grown in a hop 'garden' rather than a hop field.
It would have been roughly around the time of Jane's birth that tea cups with handles became a thing, before that tea was served in a small handless cup sitting in a deep saucer, and it was normal to tip a small amount at a time into the saucer to allow it to cool more quickly and then sip it from the saucer. You'll come across references in Georgian novels to taking a 'dish' of tea rather than a 'cup'. Now I'm typing this I remember a few old (and rather uncouth) people still doing that during my childhood in Scotland the 1970s.
Thus the expression " would you like that Blowed and saucered for ya?" Meaning catering to your wishes.
In Russia we associate tea-drinking with England. I would say that Russians are gib tea lovers and many people if not most drink loose tea. Tea bags is something for students, many here think. Most cafes, all restaurants serve loose tea in a teapot here. Probably, one of the greatest disappointments of Russians travelling to England is to be served tea in a form of a teabag. We have a whole hoo-hah for teas - tea pots, kettles, teapot warmers, strainers etc. When borders are open again, do come to Moscow or St Petersburg for tea experiences :-) And thank you for a lovely video!
Oh, thank you so much for sharing!!
this was so interesting, a delight! xx ☕☕☕
Thank you!! 😊
Lol, yes! "In the 'before' times"....❤
Such a lovely video! Thanks for sharing.... But we should pool together and get you a Wedgewood cup. You really deserve it after all this work!
Running upstairs to make tea!
Tea and youtube a classic combination.
Well researched and captivating ! Subscribing !!!
I'm pretty sure that all these customs are still followed in the UK except the ladies withdrawing! I still certainly do!
I'm coming a bit late to the table, but as a tea drinker since the age of 14, I had to chime in. I also started watching Masterpiece Theater and PBS Mystery! at about the same time. Though I live in Southern California, my Paternal Grandfather was born in Nottingham, England. I am an Anglophile, indeed. While it is fictionalized, the film Amazing Grace with Ioan Gruffudd illustrates William Wilberforce's fight against the slave trade and the boycotts of sugar. My usual teas are Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Gold with 2% milk (no sugar) to wake me up in the morning, and Numi Gunpowder Green or Ahmad Darjeeling with milk for the afternoon. I was quite thrilled when the local International market opened; they have an entire aisle devoted to tea, and sell samovars as well as the decorative tins I can't stop buying. So far all of your topics are on point for me! Look forward to watching more.
I prefer tea the western way when I’m alone or having a quick lunch with someone. I only put cream or sugar sometimes in the winter, since I hate hot cocoa. When I want to have a relaxing or social time with friends, I drink gong fu! It’s hard to drink it alone, but it’s really great for lowering anxiety.
I am a complete tea addict and I love Twinings Tea best. Darjeeling especially. Also Earl Grey.
Twinings teas are very good, I especially like the Darjeeling. However Earl Grey reminded me of hair oil my grandmother would put on our hair, it had bergamont in it.
I think Twinings' quality has really dropped, at least in the US. I've switched to Tazo or Stash brand (if I can find it).
As shown at 18:54, was it the custom for gentlemen to extend their legs and shoes into the middle of the table cloth when tea was taken out-of-doors?
I don't drink tea often, but I do drink honey and lemon in hot water lol. I love high tea spreads with yummy pastries and cream. A couple hotels did them in the before times and it was a fun excuse to dress up. So I guess tea is a social thing for me.
Oh, yes, high tea is such a lovely experience! The word tea I believe comes from “tisanes” which are herbal brews used long before those leaves from China were introduced in England, and lemon and honey should count!
@@AJaneiteSews Thank you for the validation! 😊 lol
My mother, first a public health nurse, then a psychiatric nurse, could not take the caffeine, even in "decaffeinated" tea or coffee during the work day. Eventually, she just took a mug of hot water to keep hydrated.
@@AJaneiteSews I think the word "tea" is of Chinese origin also, but from a different dialect than the one that "cha" comes from. Cogito has an interesting video about it.
@@AJaneiteSews The word tea actually comes from the Chinese word for tea, 茶, as opposed to the word tisane, which comes from either Greek or French, I believe. The two words are not cognates.
In Yorkshire, we have breakfast, dinner and then tea 🥰 tea is such a staple here, we made a meal out of it.
Very informative
What were cream ices? They sound good! Very informative video. I love tea!
I sip on unsweetened iced tea all day. As for hot tea, I prefer very strong black tea or Earl Grey with milk (non dairy) and sugar.
From Jane's letters it seems she did not like cream in her tea, but probably only took it with sugar.
In one of her letters she
compliments an acquaintance on the pleasing trait of taking "no cream in her Tea."
Morning tea is the most common for me, followed by afternoon tea. I am sensitive to caffeine, so if I drinks any in the evening, I need decaffeinated tea. Luckily these days it exists. Otherwise I may drink hot chocolate in the evening.
I only learned to like tea as an adult. The key factor was adding fresh lemon in the tea. That's my preferred addition to black tea.
Then I found out green tea and how to make it good, not bitter. It won over black tea 6-1. Good green tea is fine as it is, I don't usually add anything to it (though some loose leaf blends with, say, cherry are delicious too.)
But then there are some unfortunate cheap (black) teas that I can only get down with almost 50% milk and some sugar.
Thank you for explaining upper class Regency tea customs!
I belong to two women's discussion groups that meet midafternoon. A paper and discussion are followed by tea, coffee, and snacks, usually three savory and three sweet. We are debating whether to cut down on the snacks, as there are usually a lot left over.
Brings a new light as to the Boston Tea Party.
How do I take my tea? Yes! lol (I love just about all teas in many ways)
Lady Grey 💕
I am form a country where tea isn't a big deal but I am almost addicted to it and I drink it in the morning no matter the season (past 3 in the afternoon, I prefer decaffeinated tea or herbal infusions). And I drink mostly black tea with citrus and a lot of sugar.
I take my tea black, fairly weak, occasionally with a squeeze of lemon. We Australians of course inherited our love of tea from our mainly British forbears, but coffee has taken over well and truly now. The quintessential 'Aussie' brew is 'billy tea', made by boiling water in a billy (not sure what it would be called elsewhere but it's a straight sided tin with a handle) over a campfire, then throwing in a handful of tea leaves and letting it brew until it's the colour of tar (almost). It's drunk without milk of course, unless you have some powdered or condensed milk in your swag 😁
So cool! Thanks for sharing!!
My uncle and Grandfather would sometimes throw in a couple of eucalyptus leaves into their billy tea. 😊
The ceremony of the tea. Does milk go in first? Should we use a tea pot or tea bags? What a bonus, fortune in the spent leaves. The tea dance. The hiatus, waiting for the tea to brew. Porcelain or china. The improvement in tea tating derived from order, etiquette. Add a cake and observe how they were meant for each other. Dunking a biscuit, beautifully elicit. Doilies, the cake stand. sugar cubes and tweezers; "shall I be mum", the dedignated pourer. Coffee does not stand a chance.
This was so well researched. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. I do have more questions about the tea rooms. At what time of day would the ladies frequent them?
So I’m basically Samuel Johnson, but with coffee.
My brother once counted the number of coffees I had per day, for a week. He determined that I never had less than five, and my highest number was 10. For an average of 7 per day.
It’s a good thing caffeine doesn’t affect me the same way as most. I can have a coffee immediately before bed, and it affects my sleep not at all. I also never get jittery. It’s something I inherited from my mother, likely connected to the ADHD she also passed along. I find that caffeine is wonderful to self medicate my ADHD with. I concentrate better, and am less fidgety. My doctor thinks that the caffeine works on me in much the same way as amphetamines- which is to say, in quite the opposite way that they do on most people. Which is why most ADHD medications are amphetamine based. But as I’m not keen on adding yet another strong drug to my pile of daily medications, I stick with plenty of coffee. Tea does also work, as it contains caffeine, but not quite as well, and I prefer the taste of coffee anyway.
I wonder if Samuel was similar to me, and found a constant stream of caffeine throughout the day to be soothing and helpful for focus?
Of course the one downside to the way my peculiar body chemistry interacts with caffeine, is that it doesn’t wake me up quite as well as it does others. Though the morning routine of coffee itself helps, even if I don’t get a nice little caffeine kickstart.
That is very interesting! Perhaps you are right about Samuel Johnson. He was very productive! My son has ADHD, and has yet to try a caffeinated beverage. Perhaps it’s time!
When I was student teaching, during morning recess one of the teachers would get a cup of coffee to take to a student of hers with ADHD. It helped them, and I’ve always remembered that.
Interesting little fact : There is a little teahouse on the Althrop estate, home of the late Diana Princess of Wales
The early bird special is apparently much older than I ever knew.
I have read most of the Jane Austen's novels and l like this writer of course
wow that's a big tea cup! did the average size vary over time? i have some tea cups and they're kinda...tiny. i think i got it in a dishes set while in college. i like the idea of a bigger cup..makes more sense for minimizing labor 🙂
Jane Austen Scholar....now thats a peak achievement for an author.
Very interesting about gentry class + tea.
Could you next explain other classes---
wealthy capitalists (probably.copied
gentry?), small business, professionals?,
I've lived in the South for decades. Therefore, my tea is taken iced with lemon.😄
My favourite breakfast is tea and toast with marmalade. I guess it hadn't been invented by the regency period.
No, modern marmalade existed by the early 1700's, and it was a normal.part of a Recency breakfast, at least for the upper and middle class. It was within the means of some lower class people, either made at home.or store bought.
I'm way more into Georgette Heyer than Jane Austen but all this regency knowledge helps put many things into context.
I'm a bit of a tea philistine as I only really drink decaf earl grey, with milk and honey, these days as any more caffeine triggers migraines. Still, tea drinking is entirely entrenched in English culture and where I live there are many tea gardens, or tea rooms, which are basically really quaint cafes.
Lovely piece, very good. Just to mention, as a Brit, you would never refer to sir Thomas Bertram without the Thomas. Titles are notoriously complicated and finicky, To keep us plebs in our place, just ‘Sir’ as we grovel.
Exactly - he's "Sir Thomas" or "Sir Thomas Bertram". You can't use "Sir" as if it were a synonym for "Mr", because Reasons 😀
Nice to know there were green tea, I make a decent cup for visiters but i dont drink normal tea