AFTERNOON DELIGHTS

Of course everything stops for tea and cake! Tom Parker Bowles brings us the great British classics – and some tasty new treats

Ah, tea. Soothing and uplifting, a salve and a sharpener, the morning jolt and the evening’s end. It’s not so much mere drink as national obsession, a fragrant religion, sippable meditation, succour in a cup. Unashamedly democratic too, poured from silver teapots and battered urns alike.

Despite tea being so stained into our national history, it only reached these shores in the middle of the 17th century. At 25 shillings a pound, it was expensive enough to be locked away in tea caddies (with the key held by the lady of the house), making it an exclusively aristocratic tipple. Nowadays, though, it’s the most widely consumed drink, after water, in the world.

In tea, just as in wine, terroir is all – that unique combination of climate, geography, soil and altitude that together create the dazzlingly diverse and distinctive flavour profiles of tea across the world. From the lofty slopes of Darjeeling and the highlands of Kenya to the more tropical sultriness of Assam, Sri Lanka and Yunnan, this all-important terroir gives tea its character, flavour, personality and charm.

And tea’s not just a cup of char. Rather afternoon tea, a meal in itself, a glorious tradition, one of Britain’s most enduring culinary gifts to the world. Cucumber sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and jam, ginger cake and Welsh cakes drenched in butter. As Henry James said, ‘There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.’

SERVE THESE TRADITIONAL SCONES WITH JAM, CLOTTED CREAM AND LAVENDER BLEND TEA. SEE PAGE 41