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Afternoon Tea: Proper and Pristine
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18018 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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5 / 1990 |
1,677 Words |
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Mindy Leaf
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While Ronald Reagna and Mikhail Gorbachev were haggling over how to prevent nuclear war, their ladies were sitting down to one of those little pleasures that make life's efforts worthwhile: taking afternoon tea.
American writer Henry James, a vocal promoter of what's been considered a "woman's drink," may have described it best: "There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." The English, of course, have always maintained a gender-neutral attitude toward their favorite national beverage.
It has taken Americans more than two hundred years (since the Boston Tea Party) to rediscover the delights of the tea break - the quiet pause that refreshes both body and soul. In big cities, it has become common for business executives of both sexes to meet for afternoon tea or for mothers and daughters to sip chattily after a shopping spree.
In short, it's fast becoming the hottest new power drink in town. Furthermore, tea's lack of calories and minimal caffeine have enhanced its appeal for those to whom "light" and "healthy" are fitness bywords.
How to Host
If you'd like to jump on the tea wagon, you might want to begin hosting afternoon teas at home. You could start by taking a few pointers from the first afternoon tea hostess in history: Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, is credited with inventing the tea break in the 1840s to help her get through the afternoon doldrums. Feeling bored and hungry one day, the duchess had her cook prepare a light snack of tea and thin slices of buttered bread to tide her over between lunch and dinner. As this small repast seemed to lift her spirits, she repeated it the next day, and the next. When friends began dropping by (more and more regularly, it seems), she added small biscuits and cakes to the menu. Before long, all of fashionable London was sitting down to afternoon tea before embarking on the daisy promenade in Hyde Park.
British tea practices haven't changed much since the time of the trend-setting duchess. Thinly sliced finger sandwiches and small biscuits (especially fresh baked scones) are still considered de rigueur. Among the simplest of menus to put together, a proper English tea may be the most inexpensive luxury you'll ever experience. Its key ingredients - leisure, congeniality, and conviviality - are so rare nowadays as to be almost priceless, yet are readily accessible to anyone who truly makes the effort. Once you've decided to host a tea, all you need to get it right are a little knowledge and a dollop of charm.
One reason the afternoon tea break is so attractive to Americans is its unusual scheduling. Accustomed as we are to eating at fixed intervals, we get a delicious sense of "playing hooky" from suddenly chucking whatever we're doing and treating ourselves to yet another meal - and in the middle of the afternoon, to boot! A world removed from that hurried cup of coffee gulped from Styrofoam, the afternoon tea break requires a commitment of no less than forty minutes. And it also calls for a complete change of scene.
Luxury hotels serve afternoon tea in their most exquisitely appointed lounges. Here, voices
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