HISTORICAL TAKE ON TEA

The Shelbourne has been welcoming guests through the doors for 200 years – an extraordinary landmark achievement.

To celebrate the historic occasion, executive chef Garry Hughes has devised The Shelbourne 200th Birthday Afternoon Tea, incorporating contemporary versions of classic desserts, inspired by the kind of sweets that the very first guests to the hotel back in 1824 might have been served.

Alongside the essential elements of a traditional afternoon tea – dainty sandwiches, homemade scones with clotted cream and jams, and a wide tea and coffee offering – the special menu also features an éclair, peach melba, pecan pie and carrot cake. These pastries and sweet treats are distinctly modern, but all have their origins in published recipes from well-known magazines and the work of other grand and renowned chefs from the 1800s.

The éclair was invented by celebrity French pastry chef to royalty, Marie-Antoine Carême, in the 1860s and has been one of the most universally beloved desserts ever since.

The peach melba was originally created in the late 1800s by ‘king of chefs and chef of kings’ Auguste Escoffier while he was working in The Savoy in London, to honour the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba.

A recipe from the southern US which first appeared in the late 1800s in Harper’s Bazaar, the pecan pie is an homage to the hundreds of thousands of American guests who have visited and stayed in The Shelbourne over the past 200 years.

Meanwhile, the carrot cake was originally published in French in 1814’s L’Art du Cuisinier by Antoine Beauvilliers, former chef to Louis XVI, and published in English for the first time in the same year The Shelbourne opened, 1824.

The Shelbourne 200th Birthday Afternoon Tea is available now in the Lord Mayor’s Lounge from €68, or from €88 with a glass of Champagne.