Serve Low Tea
The terms "High Tea" and "Low Tea" are often confused. High Tea or "meat tea" referred to dinner. During the Victorian Period, working class families ate a substantial evening meal, served family style, consisting of meat, bread, butter, potatoes, pickles, cheese and, of course, tea. The meal was called "high" tea because it was eaten at a high dining table rather than a low tea table.
On the other hand, afternoon tea, was called "low tea" because it was usually taken in a sitting room or drawing room. Low tables were placed near sofas or chairs. Since low tea wasn't a meal, but like an afternoon snack meant to stave off hunger, finger foods were the common fare. Low tea can be served at engagement parties, showers or as a complement to business meetings and other gatherings. Here is how to serve it.
Steps
- Choose a suitable time and location. Try to keep with the traditional time and setting for your low tea event.
- Note that the traditional time for low tea is 4:00 p.m. Guests do not stay beyond 7 o'clock in the evening.
- The location is usually your home, in your living room or dining room. If it's warm enough, you can also hold low tea on the porch, or perhaps in the garden if the weather proves fair.
- Send Invitations by post. Although email is used for most things, it should not be used for an invitation to low tea. Make or buy special invitations and put special effort into handwriting the names of your guests and yourself, even if everything else is printed.
- Plan the setting. Fresh flowers, tablecloths, cloth napkins, place cards and Crochet a Vintage Rose Doily add elegant touches.
- Place low tables around sofas and arm chairs. If the setting is in the garden, place soft cushions on the chairs to ensure that they are comfortable.
- Music can enhance the atmosphere but be sure to choose music that fits everyone's taste and is not played loudly; just choose something soft for background enhancement.
- Gather the essentials as would suit any proper tea. There are some absolute must-haves for a good low tea event:
- A teapot of silver or bone china is, of course, de rigueur.
- You'll need a Clean a Copper Kettle to boil the water before you transfer it to the teapot. Also, before pouring the boiling water into the pot you intend to serve from, be sure to warm it. You can do this by filling the table pot with hot water from the tap while the other pot is put on the stove to boil.
- You will also need a sugar bowl and cream jug (pitcher).
- Use small silver Use Kitchen Tongs for sugar cubes, and a silver sugar spoon for granulated or raw sugar crystals.
- Arrange the teapot, sugar bowl and jug (pitcher) on a silver tray. Additional trays may be needed for serving, depending on the size of your gathering.
- Use your best china cups, saucers and Dessert Pies plates and silver forks, spoons and butter knives. If serving loose tea, you'll also need an infuser (steeper) or tea balls for guests to use, or a strainer for placing over cups when pouring from the Collect Teapots.
- Select teas for the affair. Provide guests with a selection loose teas or teabags. Loose tea has a much better pay off in terms of flavor than bagged tea- the larger particles of tea hold their flavor longer while exposed to air than the fine powder used to stuff tea bags- but if you can't find loose tea or are just starting out, tea bags are fine so long as they are very fresh. Provide individual infusers for each guest, if a variety of loose teas are served, or use tea strainers. If you serve only one type of tea, brew it in the pot. If serving several types, fill the pot with boiling water.
- Search for low tea recipes. You can find a plethora of low tea recipes in cookbooks and online. You can make tempting tidbits yourself, create menus of pre-made purchases or you might have your tea catered. Low tea traditionally consists of dainty tea sandwiches, Desserts and Sweets, finger foods, and a hot dish in colder months. Petit-fours, tarts, cream puffs and scones are among the most common offerings, accompanied by Jams Preserves and Condiments, lemon curd and clotted cream. Some recipes can be found on wikiHow, such as:
- Make a Petit Beurre Pie
- Lavender scones
- Pinwheel sandwiches
- Make Chocolate Puffs
- Crumpets
- Muffins
- Edible flowers
- Candied violets
- Lemon meringue pie
- Make a Pear and Vanilla Tart
- Make Cucumber Sandwiches
- Strawberry sorbet.
Tips
- Pick a theme for your tea and co-ordinate foods, dishes, music and, perhaps, even costumes.
- Remember that the purpose of finger foods served at low tea is to allow guests to take small bites and easily maintain a conversation. One is not merely taking tea to satisfy hunger, but to take time to converse and enjoy the company of close friends.
- If you have been lucky enough to be a guest at a tea, you must hand write and mail a thank-you note. Don't put it off; you won't become more grateful as time goes on, so write a few heartfelt lines to your hostess as soon as you get home, address it, and mail it at the next post.
- Consider offering alternatives for guests who may not like hot tea. In winter coffee or hot chocolate would do well, and in summer freshly made lemonade or iced tea are safe alternatives. A very good recipe for iced tea is to take two tablespoons of black tea and four peach white tea teabags (or two tablespoons of loose tea, if you can get your hands on it) and brew them in three cups of hot water. Add the black tea 2 minutes before the white tea then brew them together in the pot no more than 3 minutes. Add three cups cool water and refrigerate. Alternately, pour the strained tea into a glass pitcher and fill up to the top with ice. By the time the tea is cooled it should be properly diluted. You can serve with additional ice or, my favorite, frozen peach slices. Remember that the proper way to serve iced tea is the same as hot tea- guests add their own sugar.
- Hand-paint place cards and invitations with simple watercolor designs or select invitations and place cards to fit your theme.
- Suggest hats and gloves for the ladies to add an old-world flair to your party. Presumably, such ladies would also be wearing dresses rather than pants; you might suggest this as well. Note that, properly, gloves should be removed before eating or drinking [or smoking] anything. Also, according to the etiquette of that old-world era, the visiting ladies are expected to keep their hats on, while the hostess should be bareheaded, as she is presumably in her own home. Barring religious observance, a gentleman is expected to remove his hat when indoors, even when he's not at a tea party.
- Hire live musicians to lend a salon air to the affair or to accentuate a cultural theme.
Warnings
- Evites are gauche. Avoid using them.
Things You'll Need
- Food and tea
- Tea set
- Teapot
- Plates, cups, silver cutlery
- Cake stands
- Tablecloth
- Napkins
- Music
- Clean house, guest towels, fresh scent in house
