Tea, and what it's called.

[randomness]

Miss Manners:

High tea is more substantial in all matters of food and drink than afternoon tea. It could include a whiskey and soda tray. Along with the dainty foods traditional to afternoon tea, there are soft-boiled eggs, sausages, sardines on toast, kippers, chicken livers and such. While some unscrupulous restaurants try to make afternoon tea sound more 'high society' by calling it high tea, the word 'high' is actually related to 'It's high time we had something to eat.' As social events go, high tea is lower on the scale than afternoon tea, because the chances of being fed dinner are small on a day you are given high tea.

This NYTimes piece expands on that.

Our menus advertised cream tea, with scones, or English tea, with crumpets. Farther down was what we had come for, the real deal: tea with finger sandwiches, scones and something called the selection of cakes, which sounded like a ceremony I very much wanted to attend. But on the menu it was called afternoon tea, which I didn’t like, because it sounded like something just anybody could have, whereas high tea suggests it’s available only to people whose families remained loyal to the king in some long-ago war.

...

The reason it wasn’t called high tea on the menu, I later learned, was because it’s not called that. High tea was what workers would eat late in the day, not at elegant lower tables but at a literally higher table, hence the name. The food was heavier — less a delicate snack and more something you scarf down over the sink. Another name for high tea — and you know no one was trying to impress anyone if these two words were allowed to touch — is “meat tea.” Like lots of traditions, it had scuttled sideways across time rather than been handed down directly, and I was doing it wrong. Not even my fantasy, it turned out, was real.

Mmmm...meat tea.

Edited to include the actual quote from Miss Manners.

Comments

[redbird]

It somehow seems utterly typical of the Times that they are running an article by someone who has done little or no research and dislikes the idea that just anyone could buy the same piece of a foreign culture that they are. (This based only on the two paragraphs you quote.) But both tea the meal and tea the beverage are in fact common.

I like cream tea, but that's mostly because if done right it includes Devon cream.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Isn't it, though?

Miss Manners said it many years ago--which is why it's one of my favorite quotes from her--and if he'd read her piece on tea, he'd have known.

(I even found an original article where she mentions "high tea". It's from 1979. But not from the Times.)

The NY Times piece ends with "Steve Macone is a writer and comedian," so perhaps he was just going for comic effect.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I like cream tea, but that's mostly because if done right it includes Devon cream.

Really, what's not to like about that?

I've seen it for sale in North America in little jars like this:
or this
which I haven't tried yet because I don't know if it survives being jarred and shipped across the Atlantic.

ETA: pesky quotation marks!

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

It does, it's very good.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

It does, but one can also make it. There are recipies rolling about the Intertubes.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

You've just shown pictures of two VERY different things. Consult an expert before adding these things to tea!

also, I would be ALL OVER "meat tea".

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

These are not meant to be added to tea. They are to be put on the scone (if you're from Devon) or on the Cornish split (if you're from Cornwall).

To quote Miss Manners again, this time about the tea service itself: "a milk pitcher (cream would be horrifying)".

I apologize if I have been misunderstood.

As for the photos, they're all I had to hand. This page does detail the difference between the two creams depicted in the photos:

http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-clotted-c-87144

And as I haven't eaten from either of the jars pictured I welcome any clarification. I get clotted cream served to me at tea and never see the containers they come from, which is why I'm asking about the jars.

I think I'll take browngirl's advice and simply make it.

ETA: There are two points you're making: I'm well aware of the first, which is that cream does not go in tea, it goes on the things you eat with tea. The second is that the two jars are different things, which I also can see now that I've looked more carefully at the photos. Thanks for clarifying that.

ETA 2: Now, I really want a scone with cream and jam. This is...annoying.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Scones are easy to make, and with my oven, my yellow covered casserole dish, and some locally bottled heavy cream, preferably Jersey cream if you can get it, you could make clotted cream.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

also, I would be ALL OVER "meat tea".

Yes, I'm also quite fond of many of the things listed as part of that meal.

[diony.livejournal.com]

The 'English Double Devon Cream' (contents of jar one) is really, really, really good spread thickly on toasted apple-walnut bread. No, even better than that.

I am intrigued by the fact that one may make it. Page bookmarked for further perusal.

[redbird]

Sorry, I forgot that people other than r_ness and I would be reading the conversation, and that if someone didn't already know what a cream tea was, "cream tea, with scones," sounds like scones plus a beverage.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

dislikes the idea that just anyone could buy the same piece of a foreign culture that they are

I don't know the details of this case, but more likely, the author is annoyed that someone could simply buy this bit of foreign culture, rather than acquiring it (that is, the knowledge that it is the proper way to live) by being raised and educated in suitably intellectual environments. If you could just buy it, how would it differentiate you from, say, a plumbing contractor (who earns three times as much money)?