Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
Americans, of which I am one, seem to think the proper term for an English Tea is "High Tea." This is not correct, high tea refers to meal served at a high table, such as a kitchen table. The correct term is "Afternoon Tea" this is where you have the tea and the wonderful sweets and sandwiches. I have heard High Tea used by newscasters and seen it in print, but it is just wrong. Am I the only one who is bugged by this?
My tea quibble is that tea must have actual leaves from the tea plant for it to be called tea, otherwise it is an tisane (an herbal infusion). But I'm fighting an uphill battle, I don't think the general public is willing to use tisane or herbal infusion, and would rather resort to calling everything simply "tea."
I didn't know the French word tisane was used by English speakers! Infusion sounds too medical to me. I'm fine with tea.
In Victoria, British Columbia, there is a five hundred star hotel that serves High Tea to the tourists, in keeping with the city's supposedly British culture (though I found there to be more genuine Brits in Ottawa than in Victoria).
And Dine Unda in Queensland, tay is supper.
And I have long wished that the expression High Coffee existed - that's my personal name for the Austro-German (etc?) tradition of having coffee and cake at 3 pm. On Sundays, and sometimes daily, it is typically served with the best china and silver, hence the "high" descriptor.
When I lived in New Zealand, high tea meant that there was a better quality and larger quantity of food with the tea. Afternoon tea would not be high tea as it could just be tea but probably with biscuits (cookies) that I found to be usually dry. A high tea would have asparagus and/or cucumber sandwiches, clotted cream, strawberries etc.
My New Zealand relatives (the "rallies") often referred to tea, and I got the impression that it was a late afternoon heavy snack, almost a supper. Could be anything from soup to stew to sandwiches.The ACTUAL tea part was optional. The bit about real tea being only from tea leaves sounds like a bit of archaic and no longer valid info. A little secret: inside tea bags are teeny weeny bits of dried TEA LEAVES!
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)