Afternoon Tea

It is no secret that the bruised and battered people of Los Angeles could stand some nurturing right now: in the spirit of which, and because this is what Brits do when the chips are down, here is your very own Brit’s guide to giving an afternoon tea party.

Photo by Kowit Phothisan on Unsplash

Afternoon tea is a proudly silly sort of occasion. Invented by a nineteenth century English duchess who found herself growing peckish around the middle of the afternoon, it is neither lunch nor dinner, you don’t have to have done anything very much to earn it, and you’re not expected to be doing very much after it for which you’ll need fortification. It is short on nutritional value, long on the sugar high, and happens at a time of day when decent and industrious folks are hard about their business. It is, to sum up, the essence of the unnecessary.

I happen to love an afternoon tea myself, and for those of you Americans thinking to cheer yourselves or your loved ones by giving one, here’s how to do so.

Obviously, you need a pot of tea. This is not difficult to make, but, as with so many British rituals, there are steps that must be adhered to. First, you fill a teakettle with fresh cold water and heat it up on the stovetop (not in a measuring jug in the microwave … but you wouldn’t do that anyway, would you?) When the water’s nearly boiling, you pour a little into a teapot, rinse it around until the pot is warm, and throw it out. Add one teabag per person or about five for a medium-sized pot (there are those who claim to use loose tea, but I don’t know anyone who actually does), and – this is particularly important – set the teapot down directly next to the kettle ready to receive the water at its hottest: you must always bring the pot to the boiling kettle, and never, ever, ever the kettle to the pot, because in that second or so of transit the water will have cooled just that one fraction of a degree, and demons be unleashed upon civilization for all eternity.

When the kettle is boiling vigorously, you pour the steaming hot water into the waiting pot. Leave it for five minutes for the tea to steep – do not attempt to touch it before the five minutes are up, or someone British will appear and sternly bat your hand away: I’m told this will happen even if you’re alone in the house. After five minutes, you have a pot of tea.

Along with the tea, you need food. Masses of food, oodles of food, far more food than you’ll ever eat at any time, let alone in the middle of the afternoon. Enough food that when guests walk into the room and catch sight of the table they will fall back, dazed, and, ideally, verging on the terrified, at the bounty on offer. This is called a slap-up tea, and where I grew up, if someone invited you to tea and didn’t make it a slap-up one … well, let’s just say you remembered.

It begins, of course, with tea sandwiches. The bread, preferably of more than one variety, must be thinly sliced and buttered – to a Brit, a sandwich without butter is simply not a sandwich – and the fillings spread thinly enough to be nibbled on with elegance. You’ll want several different fillings. Wafer-sliced English cucumbers, sprinkled with a little salt, are a non-negotiable, and if you want to add cream cheese and dill, people will be polite about it. A slice of ham or cheese is an option, although under no circumstances must you commit the transatlantic vulgarity of combining the two, because that’s for Americans and this afternoon we’ve decided to be British. Egg salad is good, as is the beloved English coronation chicken salad, which sounds posh but is really just plain old chicken salad with a bit of curry powder mixed in. Smoked salmon with a squeeze of lemon really is posh, and jam is popular with children: one glorious afternoon, our neighbors brought honey from their bees and we went all Rupert Brooke, and it was heavenly.

Once the sandwiches have been assembled, they are cut into quarters, some into squares and some into triangles, some even soldier-shaped if you’re feeling avant-garde: the idea is to produce several plates teeming with different shapes and colors to denote the different fillings. Choices must abound. American teenagers, on catching their first sight of the plates of English-style afternoon tea sandwiches, have been known physically to howl with joy: this is when you know you’re onto a good tea.

To accompany the sandwiches, you’ll need a variety of other treats, both savory and sweet. Over the years, I have perfected my own secret recipe for concocting these in advance, which, since we are particularly close chums, I will now share with you. First, you open your door and leave your house. Then you climb into your car and drive to the nearest shop – or in the case of Santa Monica, shoppe – that sells English food. When you are there, you load up with whatever they have on offer. And, as they say back in London – sorted.

Chocolate fingers are a good choice, as are chocolate Hobnobs and those odd little chocolate orange spongey affairs called Jaffa cakes. Ginger nuts are good for dunking when nobody’s looking, shortbread never goes amiss, and the impressively unattractive crackers filled with squashed currants, officially called Garibaldi biscuits but known throughout the land as flies’ cemeteries, are surprisingly tasty if you remember not to look at them. For the savories, a tea party isn’t a tea party without a plate of Marmitey Twiglets; a quiche cut into bite-sized pieces is always welcome; and the cylinders of sausage meat wrapped in pastry and known as sausage rolls are agreed by everyone to be hopelessly déclassé, but I’ve rarely known anyone turn one down, either.

If your shoppe has a bakery counter, the majestic cake called the Victoria Sandwich, a solid dowager of a sponge cut in half, spread with jam and buttercream and sandwiched back into a regally upstanding whole, is the undisputed queen of the tea table. You could go further, and buy scones, jam and clotted cream, but then it stops being afternoon tea and becomes cream tea, which is a different affair, as the scones will dominate the table, and you would be astonished at just how high British emotions can run about whether you call them scones or sconns, and whether you spread the jam on top of the cream on them or the cream on top of the jam on them: tricky tea guests, those scones, and best left in the shoppe, in my personal opinion.

And now it’s time to dig in. The person dispensing the tea, regardless of gender, will formally announce him-, her-, or theirself to be Mother (seriously – it’s a fundamental part of the ritual), and the idea is to keep both food and beverage flowing until the guests cry out for mercy. If you want to give yourself a cheap private giggle, you might also offer around a jug of the mild and fruity British summer cocktail called Pimm’s cup, and note at precisely which point the most sober of Americans will begin to break out their Bertie Wooster impressions. (Curious but true – in a precarious world, this is one certainty you can rely on).

A fine time will be had, and at some point the men will peel off to the garden shed to talk about Skil saws while the women will stay at the table to talk about the men. The sun will lower in the sky, the men will return from their conclave, the children will grow restless, stomachs will be patted ruefully, and affectionate good-byes said.

The table will be cleared and the dishwasher contentedly humming in excellent time for the first, deliciously virtuous, gin and tonic of the evening. And the next day, there’s a sumptuous supper to be made of the leftover sandwiches covered in cheesy egg batter and baked into a savory bread and butter pudding.

Win-win, is my verdict. And just what we need right now, too.