A traditional baking recipe from Devon found on essentiallyengland.com
A Heavenly Treat for Tea Time!
Devon scones and jam must be one of the most wonderful things
to have with a traditional afternoon tea! They’re on the menu at
every teashops and even British Airways serve them on their flights.
An article posted by Nina Martyris a literary journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn. on The Salt on npr.org in February 2016
News that British tea-drinking is on the decline is stirring a tempest in a teapot across the pond. But U.K. leaders might have welcomed such headlines in the 1970s, when the length of the tea break became a major point of political contention.
So recounts Charles Moore’s acclaimed new biography, Margaret Thatcher, which describes the British prime minister’s “titanic struggle” against the trade unions — a victory for which she was praised and reviled in equal measure.
During the ’70s, as hundreds of labor strikes hobbled the British economy, public frustration with trade unions was summed up in two words: tea break.
Tea breaks, went the popular complaint, had brought the country to its knees.
Tea drinking in the U.K. was and is a sacred institution that cuts across the class divide. But with the sharp rise in what were called “wildcat strikes” over the length of the tea break, the custom became a contentious symbol of trade union truculence.
Even Thatcher’s bitter political rival, Jacques Delors, the then-president of the European Commission, admitted to Moore: “She demonstrated a sort of revolt against the old British system with their tea breaks. I had respect for that.”
Americans who lived or worked in England remember being baffled by the rigor with which teatime was observed.
When writer and self-confessed “baseball fanatic” Jeff Archer spent his honeymoon in England in 1973, he ended up playing a friendly match for a local team in Croydon, a London borough. Since it was a freezing day, Archer kept his jacket on to keep his arm loose until it was his turn to pitch. “I stepped on the rubber for my windup,” he recounted to me, “but there was no umpire. I looked at the backstop and saw him drinking tea with a mate. I’d never seen anything like this before in baseball. I hollered, ‘Hey, Ump, let’s get going. My arm’s going to stiffen up.’ He looked at me, and then began talking to his comrade. I ran to the bench and put on my jacket. About five minutes later, he finished his tea and went behind the plate. I took off my jacket and the game resumed.”
Archer was no doubt unfamiliar with “Everything Stops for Tea,” a song popular in Britain during the 1930s and ’40s:
Oh, they may be playing football
And the crowd is yelling, “Kill the referee!”
But no matter what the score, when the clock strikes four
Everything stops for tea
Another American who got a tough taste of tea breaks was a thin, young director on the verge of a nervous breakdown: George Lucas.
In the summer of 1976, Lucas was shooting the first Star Wars in England’s EMI-Elstree Studios, chosen for its enormous empty studio space. He had a hellish time, writes J.W. Rinzler in The Making Of Star Wars. The English crew had little respect either for Lucas or his peculiar film involving light sabers that kept breaking. And while Lucas admired the crew’s technical skills, he was bewildered by their work habits. Work began at 8:30 a.m., stopped for an hourlong lunch and two tea breaks at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., and ended at 5:30 p.m. sharp, after which the crew promptly went to the pub. When it was break time, filming would stop dead, even if things happened to be mid-scene.
his led to a very funny incident during the 1982 filming of Return of the Jedi, when Lucas returned to EMI. It involved actor Harrison Ford, a loudspeaker and Salacious B. Crumb — known to film fans as a lackey of the evil Jabba the Hutt.
Tim Rose, the puppeteer behind the Crumb character, recalls that during one tea break, the sound man left for tea but forgot to turn off Rose’s microphone. Unaware of this, Rose, who was stationed below the set, with his arm stuck up though a hole in the floor to operate his puppet, said in Crumb’s cackling voice, “The take went well, but this Harrison guy, is he going to talk during our laugh? Because it’s really putting me off.” As his words boomed over the speaker, everyone began to laugh — except for Ford, who stormed off and refused to return until “the asshole who said that was fired.”
Rose wasn’t fired, though Ford was told he was.
The tea break is inextricably intertwined with Britain’s industrial history. Beginning in the 1780s, workers (including children) clocked grueling shifts alongside inexhaustible machinery — and drank sugary tea as a stimulant to keep going.
“Cheap, convenient and energizing, tea seemed ideally suited to the short work breaks of 19th-century machine culture,” says Tamara Ketabgian, a professor of English at Beloit College and author of The Lives of Machines. “Rather than weak beer, workers began to drink tea.”
Ketabgian points out that the more paternalistic factory owners, who were interested in their workers’ health, opened canteens and charged a discounted sum for tea and food.
Over the years, workers used the power of collective bargaining to wrest better working conditions — including tea breaks, paid holidays, medical care and fairer wages — from reluctant factory owners. Indeed, in Moore’s biography, a Labour Party leader accuses Margaret Thatcher of having the vices of a Victorian mill owner.
But the Britain of the 1970s had been battered by one tea break strike too many. Public frustration was never better expressed than by the eternally enraged Basil Fawlty, from the era’s beloved BBC comedy Fawlty Towers, about a hotel where things don’t work. In one episode that captured the national mood, Basil rants against the workers of the nationally owned Leyland Motors:
“Another car strike. Marvelous, isn’t it? The taxpayers pay them millions each year so they can go on strike. It’s called socialism. I mean, if they don’t like cars, why don’t they get themselves another bloody job designing cathedrals or composing violin concertos? The British Leyland Concerto in four movements, all of ’em slow, with a four-hour tea-break in between.”
But in the midst of dysfunction, there was a ray of hope.
As Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson write in The Age of Insecurity, which examines the economic history of postwar Britain, the only person who seemed capable of getting the hotel to work was Basil’s “Gorgon of a wife,” Sybil. “Like another woman coming to prominence in the 1970s,” they write, “she was middle-aged, blonde, shrill, philistine and utterly ruthless.”
A light, delicious cake recipe found in
“90 Years of KitchenAid – The CookBook”
This American cake is extremely light, thanks to the use of oil instead of butter and the addition of extra egg whites. With such a virtuous cake, it is surely not a sin to add a rich mascarpone cream… The best accompaniment to this cake is, of course, a cup of Earl Grey tea.
If you are interested in downloading
’90 Years of KitchenAid – The CookBook’
click the tittle above
A delicious chocolate recipe found on epicurus.com
Tasty, sultry and sinfully good, Earl Grey Chocolates provide a delicious snack – a morsel of love. The tea ganache is smooth
and luscious.
This one is for you Ingrid ❤
Typhoo’s origins are located in Birmingham . By the turn of the 20th century, Birmingham had over sixty tea merchants selling mostly large leaf tea.
The founder of Typhoo, John Sumner, was born 26 February 1856 in Birmingham. His grandfather (William) and father (John) had established a grocery business in the Bull Ring in Birmingham.
In the early 1900s John Sumner senior, now in his seventies, left the running of the shop to his son. John junior was happy with the successful business but had long sought a speciality product to develop. The answer came from his sister Mary Augusta. She suffered from indigestion and had tried a special tea made from tiny particles, not the large leaf variety that was common. The tea brought her great relief from her indigestion and she approached John to suggest he sold the tea in his shop.
John decided to go ahead. He bought 30 chests of tea and spent £200 on advertising, even though his friends suggested he might be wasting his money. John decided that, instead of selling the tea loose over the counter, he would packet the tea under a brand name. The criteria he placed on choosing a name for his tea were:
The name must be distinctive and unlike others
It must be one which would trip off the tongue
It must be one which could be protected by registration
He finally settled on Typhoo Tipps. Typhoo meaning, in part, the Chinese word for doctor. The double p in Tipps was originally a printing error but remained misspelt on the packets of tea for many years.
Typhoo was the first brand of tea to be sold pre-packaged rather than loose over the counter. In order to encourage his customers to purchase the tea John gave away a jar of cream to each person that bought a pound packet. The tea quickly became popular and John’s customers were becoming loyal to the brand that. Word of mouth recommendation from John’s customers led beyond his regular clientele and soon other grocers were asking to purchase the Typhoo tea, inspiring John to set up his wholesale agency trade.
1905 saw John close his grocery business in order to pay off debts to the bank. However, he took the opportunity to invest in Typhoo and create a private company. On 29 July 1905, and financed by John’s friends, Typhoo Tea Ltd was incorporated.
In the first year, Typhoo managed to show a small profit and silence the critics that said John would never make a business from small-leafed tea. John had, however, drawn attention to tea made from the edge of the leaf. This pure-edge leaf tea produced 80 more cups to the pound than ordinary tea and also cut out the stalk that contained tannin and caused indigestion. John even managed to get his tea recommended by doctors and was able to sell it through chemists’ shops.
As early as 1906 John Sumner was having special Typhoo branded teapots made to sell to his customers. He also inserted 
circulars into the tea packets to highlight its benefits, and included picture cards on a range of subjects, which became very collectable.
Typhoo Tea Ltd made steady progress. In 1909 John had managed to pay off all his debts. He celebrated by travelling to Ceylon to appoint a buying/blending agency to buy the tea directly from the tea auctions, therefore reducing costs. John also moved all his blending requirements to Ceylon, again reducing costs and resulting in a reduction of the cost of Typhoo to the public. The company continued to grow in both size and in the loyalty of its customers.
In March 1917 Typhoo faced a tough challenge from the British government. The start of the First World War had caused the government to announce it was going to ration tea by buying up all the available tea and then distributing limited amounts to retailers at a uniform price.
Because Typhoo was trading in leaf-edge rather than ordinary tea, they could not make their product from the tea the government intended to supply. Requests for the supply of leaf-edge tea were turned down, and even an appeal signed by 4000 men in the medical profession could not change the government’s mind.
John decided to go to the public, inserting a circular into the Typhoo packets that asked every customer to write to the Tea Controller stating the medical reason why they required Typhoo’s product. The Tea Controller, deluged with letters, eventually gave in and granted Typhoo a permit to trade in leaf-edge tea.
After the war Typhoo continued to expand, moving its packaging business into larger premises with the latest packaging machinery. Blending was still carried out by the Ceylon agents in Colombo.
In 1932 John Sumner was knighted in recognition of his charitable services that included the founding of the John Sumner Trust, devoted to work with education, literature, art and research. The award also recognised John’s setting up of the Colehaven Endowed Homes for Gentlewomen and his work with hospitals. John celebrated his knighthood with a staff party and a bonus for all his employees.
In the early 1930s problems arose with the quality of the tea being supplied from Ceylon. It was discovered that the agents in Ceylon were not adhering to the quality control requirements put in place by Typhoo. They were, in fact, purchasing inferior teas at low prices and then overcharging for the blend in order to make a profit.
The matter was followed up by John Sumner’s son, J R Hugh Sumner, and the situation was finally resolved in January 1933 when the contract with the Ceylon agency was terminated. The newly appointed agents, Carson & Co. Ltd took over the responsibility for buying and blending and continued for many years until market trends led to less Ceylon tea being required for the blends. Around this time Typhoo was increasing in capacity and was able to house blending equipment in its works in the Birmingham Canal Basin. After the blending machinery had been completely installed in 1934, Typhoo began to employ its own tea taster/blenders.
Now in advancing years, John Sumner senior visited the works less and less and died on 11 May 1934. After the death of his father, J R Hugh Sumner was elected chairman of Typhoo.
With the onset of the Second World War, once again a government Tea Controller took ownership of all the stocks of tea. Rationing of tea began in 1940 and continued for a further 12 years.
Wartime bombing devastated the Typhoo factories. Unable to pack their own tea, Typhoo made arrangements to have an emergency blend packed at the factories of Messrs Brooke Bond Ltd and Lyons Ltd. The employees at Typhoo made great efforts to make enough repairs to the factory to allow the Typhoo brand to continue and, by June 1941, a limited amount of genuine Typhoo tea was available. A steady turnover of stock was maintained until the end of the war when the damage to the works could be fully repaired. Wartime also saw a change to the name of the company. ‘Sumners’ was dropped from the front of the name, leaving Typhoo Tea Ltd.
After tea rationing had finished, Typhoo once again concentrated on promoting their brand. Throughout the 1950s they used various promotional campaigns, including the reintroduction of the picture cards that had been popular before the war.
The tea buyers started to buy more tea from India and introduced a shipping department to deal with the administration. New packing machines were installed at the factory to cope with the increased output and by 1960 Typhoo had become the brand leader.
By the mid 1960s, Typhoo was annually packing more than 80 million pounds of tea and exporting to 40 countries worldwide. J R Hugh Sumner, aged 80, finally retired and handed over the chairmanship to managing director H C Kelley.
Typhoo’s success had, over the years, attracted attention from potential investors. However, it wasn’t until the late 1960s that the management was tempted into a merger. They entered into talks with Schweppes, the famous soft drinks firm, and on 24 January 1968 it was announced that Typhoo was to join Schweppes’ old Food Division to form a new company called Typhoo Schweppes. A year later, Cadbury’s also joined the conglomeration, creating Cadbury Schweppes Typhoo.
In 1986 Typhoo was sold in a management buyout and the new company was called Premier Brands. The company immediately set about increasing its tea 
business with the purchase of the famous Scottish tea company, Melrose’s, in November 1986. This was the first of four acquisitions made by Premier in 1986-7. The second purchase was the Glengettie Tea Company followed by Ridgways and Jersey Trading Corporation SrL.
Significant profit improvement was a key feature of the following years. Premier continued to expand its tea operation by acquiring the herbal tea market leader, London Herb & Spice. Internal growth also saw the development of products, including Typhoo One Cup and Typhoo Q Tea instant.
In 1989 Premier Brands was bought by Hillsdown Holdings and then in 1999 by American venture capitalists Hicks Muse Tate and Furst. Further product developments were seen in 1999 when Typhoo became the first tea brand to introduce a green tea blend to the UK market and, in 2004, with the launch of Typhoo Fruit and Herb.
On 31 October 2005 Apeejay Surrendra Group, one of India’s largest tea producers, acquired Typhoo and its associated brands.
Text from typhootea.com
A delicious bun recipe found on bbcgoodfood.com
Fruit buns flavoured with aromatic tea and orange to be served toasted with lashings of butter.
Are you a tea drinker? Are you a fan of burly, dark Irish Breakfast, English Breakfast, or any other blends made from Assam tea? Then we have bad news for you: Assam teas are becoming wimpier and it looks as if climate change is the culprit.
![assam_tea_hills_thumb[2]](https://recipereminiscing.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/assam_tea_hills_thumb2.jpg "assam_tea_hills_thumb[2]")
News from India – the world’s largest producer of tea – is that the climate of Assam state in the country’s northeast is getting warmer and wetter. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for tea, per se, but it’s Assam’s unique geographical attributes that have made the full, astringent flavors of Assamese tea possible. Production has dropped by almost 100,000 tons since 2007 and the flavor of the tea is, according to Associated Press, weakened.
“Earlier, we used to get a bright, strong cup. Now it’s not so,” L.P. Chaliha, a professional tea taster, told the AP.
![assam_tea_thumb[2]](https://recipereminiscing.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/assam_tea_thumb2.jpg "assam_tea_thumb[2]")
Tea grows best in subtropical climates but, like any plant, it also requires a dormancy period. With rising temperatures, the tea trees simply aren’t going dormant.
“In the tea-growing areas of Assam, average temperatures have risen 2C [3.6F] and rainfall has fallen by more than a fifth in the past 80 years,” reported Britain’s The Independent. “Globally, 2010 was the hottest year on record, according to temperature readings by Nasa’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. An increase in temperatures affects the ability of the plant to grow.”
The British introduced commercial tea production to Assam in the 19th century. Attempts to plant popular Chinese varieties failed but a local strain of tea – Camellia sinensis var. assamica – proved quite adept for commercial needs. Assam tea “has more phenolic compounds and caffeine than China tea,” writes Harold McGee in his book, On Food and Cooking, “and produces a stronger, darker black tea.”
There’s more than just higher temperatures at work, though. Changing weather patterns also produce erratic weather which stresses the plants. While over all rainfall has decreased, the number of sunny days during the annual monsoon have decreased, as well, meaning the plants are struggling with damper conditions. Damper condition are perfect, however, for the tea mosquito bug, a particularly destructive pest.
![Assam Tea tasting_thumb[2]](https://recipereminiscing.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/assam-tea-tasting_thumb2.jpg "Assam Tea tasting_thumb[2]")
It isn’t only tea that’s affected by the change in weather patterns, by the way. French wine producers, too, are feeling the impact of warmer weather, according to AP, which affects not only the flavor of their products, but the alcohol content. The problem is only expected to get worse.
“The U.N. science network foresees temperatures rising up to 6.4 degrees Celsius (11.5 degrees F) by 2100,” reported the AP. “NASA reported earlier this month that the January-November 2010 period was the warmest globally in the 131-year record. U.N. experts say countries’ current voluntary pledges on emissions cuts will not suffice to keep the temperature rise in check.”
This is not good news for me, I’ve loved this dark, flavourful tea as long as I can remember – Ted 😦
Text from Delish.com
A spicy 19th century tea cake recipe found on
A Taste of History with Joyce White
Joyce White who runs A Taste of History with Joyce White writes: This recipe is one in a collection of 19th century recipes I found at the Maryland Historical Society. It is a light and moist cake that is lightly scented with nutmeg. Perfect with your favorite cup of tea!
A traditional hot beverage recipe from the Middle East
found on allrecipes.com
This is the typical tea you will find in regular housed in Kuwait. Its deliciously aroma and the spices give it a rich taste.
A classic afternoon tea recipe found on travelaboutbritain.com
Cornish Cream Tea (also known as a Devonshire tea or Devon cream tea Cornish cream tea) is a form of afternoon tea light meal, consisting of tea taken with a combination of scones, clotted cream*, and jam. Traditionally a speciality of Devon and Cornwall, cream teas are offered for sale in tea rooms in those two counties, as well as in other parts of England, and elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
* Clotted cream (sometimes called scalded, clouted, Devonshire or Cornish cream) is a thick cream made by indirectly heating full-cream cow’s milk using steam or a water bath and then leaving it in shallow pans to cool slowly. During this time, the cream content rises to the surface and forms “clots” or “clouts”. It forms an essential part of a cream tea.
A recipe from “Pillsbury’s Best 1000 Recipes –
Best of Bake-Off Collection 42” 
A moist cake made with tea and chopped raisins, with a delicate
lemon flavour that is repeated in the icing.
Recipe from Senior Winner Mrs. Barbara B. Constant,
Culver City, California.
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A classic afternoontea recipe found on realfood.tesco.com
Afternoon tea is a light meal typically eaten between 4 pm and 6 pm. Observance of the custom originated amongst the wealthy classes in England in the 1840s. Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford, is widely credited as transforming afternoon tea in England into a late-afternoon meal whilst visiting Belvoir Castle. By the end of the nineteenth century, afternoon tea developed to its current form and was observed by both the upper and middle classes. It had become ubiquitous, even in the isolated village in the fictionalised memoir Lark Rise to Candleford, where a cottager lays out what she calls a “visitor’s tea” for their landlady: “the table was laid… there were the best tea things with a fat pink rose on the side of each cup; hearts of lettuce, thin bread and butter, and the crisp little cakes that had been baked in readiness that morning.”
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An introduction to brewing and serving
classic Moroccan mint tea found on sbs.com.au 
The preparation and serving of tea is considered an art in Morocco, and chief to both are the proper pot, glasses, and the special 3-legged tray (“sinya”) on which it’s usually served. The teapots come in 3 sizes (individual, 2 people, and large for families), and are crafted of tin, brass, aluminum, or silver alloys. Depending upon social rank, teapots might be engraved sterling or gold plated. Almost all but the poorest families will have an elaborate tea set including a decorative tray and glasses.
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A new take on the gravlax found on goodhousekeeping.co.uk
The floral flavours of Earl Grey tea work wonders with the richness of the salmon. Pressing it under a weight firms up the fish, making slicing easy.
– 
RecipeReminiscing 