Potty about tea

CUTTING edge cuisine will be celebrated during the next week or so. Visitors to the York Festival Of Food And Drink can try out all manner of modern delicacies in the food theatre, the sampling boulevard and at venues across the city. But they can also look back to an age before motorised pepper grinders and motormouth TV chefs.

Historians at York Castle Museum, the original story of everyday life, have arranged exhibitions and demonstrations showing how our ancestors used to fill their boots.

The English way of taking tea down the years is celebrated on two separate lunchtimes at the museum next week. On Wednesday Kay Docherty, assistant curator of social history, will be examining the Georgian's attitude to teatime.

Back then, a decent cuppa was the prerogative of the upper classes. "It was a big show of wealth at the time, even though it was quite a widespread drink between the classes," says Kay.

"The lower classes also drank tea, but obviously they would have lower grade sugars, and a lower class of tea leaves as well."

Good quality tea was such a precious commodity, it was kept in locked caddies, she says.

A formal afternoon tea was the idea of a noblewoman who noticed she "had a sinking feeling at around 4 o'clock". Soon every aristocrat was sipping and gossiping their way through this drowsy hour.

Mind you, it was bad form to let anyone from below stairs "be mother".

"It was usually the lady of the house who did the pouring. It wouldn't have been left to the servants," explains Kay. "You would place a teaspoon across the top of your cup to signal you didn't want a refill."

As for the cups themselves, you had to be careful not to burn your fingers. "I don't think many people realised the first cups were handle-less," she says.

"The first ceramics were imported from China and the didn't have handles. They were just called tea bowls."

Katy Turner, curator of social history, takes up the tea cup two days later with The Well Ordered Table. "It will be looking at the Victorian tradition of tea," says Katy.

Again, we are back to that class divide. For the lower orders, tea meant a proper meal with meat. For the landed gentry, it was usually a snack to tide you over between luncheon and a late dinner. A slice or two of seed or fruit cake filled the gap nicely.

The women would wear their afternoon tea gowns, and could mix their favourite blend from speciality teas such as Darjeeling and Ceylon.

Considering how much they ate, it is a wonder wealthy Victorians were not all huge. Ah, some of them were, says Katy, but "a well-made corset hid a multitude of sins".

To finish with the pudding course, York Castle Museum's Sarah Maultby will be discussing the history of ice-cream at the Food Theatre on Thursday. With Michael Hjort, of York's Melton's restaurants, they will attempt to make ice-cream with 19th century equipment.

With little more than pewter pots, a churn, paddles and fancy moulds, they aim to create iced desserts, including a popular flavour from Victorian times: cucumber.

Before the advent of the freezer, how was this possible? "They shipped ice in from Norway," Sarah explains.

"They learnt how to keep it for quite a long time by building ice houses, with a dome, which looked like igloos. There's one just outside York city walls." These structures went down 100ft, and ice was kept between layers of straw.

Ice-cream can be traced back to China in 900AD, but it arrived in Europe much later.

"People say Charles I ate it, but there's no evidence for that. You are really looking at water ices appearing in the 1660s, and cream ices appearing in the 18th century."

Updated: 08:39 Saturday, September 14, 2002