Taking Tea in the Long 18th Century (and how not to do it)

Francis Hayman, Portrait of Jonathan Tyers and Family, 1740 (Tyers owned Vauxhall Gardens)

Tea was one of the most popular beverages in the 18th century, if not the most popular, in spite of its cost. Originally imported from China, the British began to grow it in India early in the 19th century. Because it was expensive, it was kept in locked canisters, with the key kept by the lady of the house. Servants sometimes dried and sold the used tea leaves to those who could not afford even the cheapest grade of tea.

How much did tea cost in the mid-18th century?

One pound of tea: from 7 shillings, 6 pence to 16 shillings.

By contrast, a pound of Fry's drinking chocolate was 5 shillings.

A pound of coffee cost from 4 shillings, 9 pence to 6 shillings.

A quart of beer was 4 pence.

Tuppence would get you dead drunk on gin.

Prices from The First Footguards website at http://footguards.tripod.com/08HISTORY/08_costofliving.htm, based on Dr. Johnson's London (published 2000) by Liza Picard.

In historical romance novels set in the Georgian and Regency periods, tea parties  tend to figure largely. We've read the descriptions: the petits-fours, the little cakes filled with whipped cream, the jam tarts, perhaps little watercress or cucumber sandwiches, scones and clotted cream, and maybe shortbread.

Most of those treats did not grace the Georgian tea table. Many of them hadn't been invented yet. Jam tarts seem to appear for the first time in The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined by John Mollard (1802). The sandwich dates to 1762, courtesy of the Earl of Sandwich's reluctance to leave the gaming table, but I suspect it did not make its appearance in polite society until much later. In fact, cookbooks of the period contain relatively few recipes for, or references to, the things we would expect to see on a tea table.

This is why:  Frosting was  non-existent. A fruitcake-style cake might get a little icing; so did some biscuits. By our standards, they were all pretty plain. There were only two ways to make a cake rise: by using yeast or by beaten eggs (like pound cake, which most of the cakes resembled).

There are lots of recipes for (caraway) seed cake, some for small cakes like ratafia puffs or Portugal cakes and some for biscuits, or what we Americans  call cookies. None of them are as sweet as modern American baked goods. The things most commonly added are spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg, and currants or raisins. None of them contain chocolate (though I have seen a recipe for what looks like mousse apparently made with drinking chocolate (sold in tablets similar to cakes of Mexican  drinking chocolate), and a candy called "chocolate almonds" which was evidently a hard candy molded in the shape of almonds). No actual almonds were harmed in the process. Vanilla was used as a flavoring in drinking chocolate. I have not seen it in any of the cake or biscuit recipes.

Scones frequently appear at tea in 18th or early 19th century novels. Ummm. No.  They are not mentioned in Susanna McIver's Cookery and Pastry (Edinburgh, 1783). As F. Marian McNeill points out in The Scottish Kitchen (1929), the scone is not mentioned even in Mrs. Beeton's earlier works (1860). It's not really surprising. Baking soda and baking powder were not in use before the middle of the 19th century. Earlier scones must have been unleavened, like the old oatcakes or bannocks, and cooked on a griddle (or girdle, if we're going to be English). The new leavening agents made the modern scone popular.

This is what an 18th century tea table looked like:

Joseph Van Aken, 1719-20.

Richard Collins, 1727

The tea tables are small. There's hardly enough room for the tea pot, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, and cups. The small child in the Richard Collins painting to the left appears to be eating something cracker-like.

Approximately 1773.

The small ginger jar in the background of Liotard's Still Life (below) may hold candied ginger. The plate in the middle appears to contain buttered bread.

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Still Life with Tea Set, 1781-83

In fact, eating what we would think of as tea table fare began with Anna Russell, 7th Duchess of Bedford, some time in the 1840s, when she began to have sandwiches or cakes with tea in the afternoon. Being a friend of Queen Victoria probably helped popularize the practice.

The only laden tea table I have found depicted in the early 19th century (Adrien Godefroy, 1801) is French rather than English, and is satirical: