Tea

(14th Feb 2021)

* opening music*

Liz

Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel

And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archeology together and love history, and also making things, and we like to start by talking about that, so what have you been making recently?

Liz

Haven’t done anything that spectacular, I’ll be honest, just, like, continuing existing projects, but I did learn that if you make brownies in a bundt tin you get like...because I really like corner pieces. So you get, like, a wedge that’s like a corner piece but then as you go through it is gets really really gooey, so it’s the best of both worlds, honestly

Hazel

Oh wow, it’s like, all corner

Liz

It’s all corner but it’s still gooey, and sometimes corner pieces are dry. It's just...bundt brownies. If you’re listening to this go and make brownies in a bundt tin right now, and thank me later

Hazel

Is that...does it come out just, like, one giant uber-brownie

Liz

Oh yeah, like, I do cut it up. Because I mean, to be fair, if you make it as a traybake it also comes out as one giant uber-brownie that you then have to cut up

Hazel

Yeah but what if you, what if you just take a bite?

Liz

What is a bundt cake if not a giant doughnut?

Hazel

This changes everything

Liz

Have I blown your mind?

Hazel

Yeah that was real-time sound of my mind being blown by the concept of uber-brownie

Liz

Think I do now at some point have to make, like, an actual doughnut batter and bake it in my bundt tin

Hazel

Just like, how many things can you bake in a bundt tin?

Liz

I mean, I’ve seen bread being done in it, and a doughnut’s like, between bread and a cake, and I’m gonna have to do this

Hazel

Solid, definitely

Liz

So what have you been up to?

Hazel

Ok, so remember last time I bragged about my passion fruit chocolate tart?

Liz

Mm-hmm

Hazel

So, I actually saved the passion fruit skins and I, I tried dyeing with them, because I kind of got interested in natural dyeing. I mean, I guess I’ve been interested for a while but I couldn’t really be bothered

Liz

Fair

Hazel

So it just tends to be, like, the interest will build up until I have an impetus to actually do the thing, so I guess because I very rarely have passionfruit, because I live in England, I was like, “oh, I should take the opportunity and see what colour this makes” and, well, what I got was, like, beige

Liz

Slightly disappointing

Hazel

It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t that inspiring, but it definitely worked, like, it’s gone a different...the wool went a different colour, so that’s kind of encouraging I feel like maybe...I left them in the fridge for a week, maybe that was bad, but I now have a book on natural dyeing, so watch this space, I guess. I’m definitely going to try some more

Liz

That, that is very exciting

Hazel

Yeah. I really want to try dyeing with woad, because it doesn’t turn blue until you lift it out of the dye pot and expose it to oxygen, and then it just magically goes blue, and it’s amazing

Liz

Yes, I remember a while ago you did say you’d planted some woad to try and dye with

Hazel

I did! And then the comfrey that was, like, all up in the soil just kind of took it over. There is woad there, but it’s like, there’s, like, Godzilla comfrey all around it, and there was only 3 or 4 woad plants, so I’m hoping they’ll spread a bit. And also, my motivation for gardening is very fleeting, so I basically planted it, and then was like “ok done”, and then (laughing) kind of didn’t do anything else

Liz

In your defence it’s really cold right now

Hazel

Yeah. But it is there so, you know, hopefully it’ll still be there and I can collect more seeds from it. I think maybe I shouldn’t have...I should have planted it in pots first and then transferred it, because my problem was I, like, dug over the ground and then...which took ages, and then just planted it, but the problem was there were lots of seeds for various things already in that soil, and so when things started coming up I couldn’t tell what was woad and what wasn’t. That was a difficult sentence

Liz

That was a true tongue...bleh. I can’t talk now. I was trying to say “that’s a true tongue-twister” which is apparently also one

Hazel

Yeah, so I didn’t know what to weed out and what to leave, so now I just have a lot of plants and I don’t want and some woad, so I think next time I would, like, grow them a bit first, and then put them in so I know what to take out, but that’s ongoing. One day

Liz

So speaking of segways...I tried to and I couldn’t get there, but I’m going to talk about tea

Hazel

Oh excellent! Yeah, I actually didn’t know what we were gonna talk about today. So, any specific kind of tea, or just, like, the realm of tea?

Liz

Well I’m gonna focus on your classic Camellia sinensis, which is the black

Hazel

Is that…

Liz

Black tea, green tea, oolong, blue tea...you know, your classic teas

Hazel

Ok, so they’re like, the same species?

Liz

They all come from the same plant

Hazel

Really?

Liz

Technically if it isn’t Camellia sinensis it’s a tisane, and that includes redbush tea, because that’s a different plant

Hazel

Really?! No way, I’m drinking redbush tea right now. I always thought it was the same plant just, like, a red version

Liz

No, redbush tea, which I’m never sure how to say but I think it’s rooibos

Hazel

Something like that

Liz

It comes from a South African plant called Aspalathus linearis

Hazel

Ok

Liz

But, yeah the Camellia sinensis, you might be able to guess from the name, comes from China, or at least that sort of area that’s like, south-west China, Tibet, northern India kind of zone

Hazel

The Tea Zone

Liz

Yeah. But British people found it in China and we named it, so it’s called sinensis

Hazel

Oh, we should...

Liz

Interesting side note actually, so you know how words for tend to to come under...there’s like, words that sound like “tea” and words that sound like “chai”?

Hazel

Mm-hmm

Liz

I found this great map which basically illustrates that if the tea spread through land-based trade routes, it tends to be a “cha” or a “chai”, and then if it was through, sort of, shipping lanes, it tends to be a “tea”. Tea if by sea

Hazel

Interesting, why does it become different at sea?

Liz

It’s different, sort of, because obviously China is very big, and contains different languages that aren’t just Mandarin Chinese. In one of these languages, more inland, it was cha, and in a coastal one it was te, so it’s purely just getting it from slightly different Chinese people

Hazel

Oh wow, that’s so cool. I wonder if it could explain my Dad, who, like, talks about tea all the time, but then specifically whenever is making tea after, like, a really long task describes it as a “cuppa cha”. Ok

Liz

So yeah, it’s common for, sort of, older British people to call it cha, probably because of British colonialism in India

Hazel

Ok

Liz

It’s sort of evolving from chai, and the middle class calling it that because they got it from India, therefore it was chai or che or something in that zone, I’m not very good at pronouncing Hindi, versus calling it tea, getting it more through, sort of, the East Indies, from Java, that kind of region

Hazel

Ok, that makes sense

Liz

I will post the map, because it’s just a very good demonstration of a thing I’m not very good at explaining verbally, apparently

Hazel

I mean that’s what maps are for

Liz

Yeah. So, do you know either of the sort of, supposed origins of tea. There’s a Chinese one and an Indian one, do you know either of them?

Hazel

Ok, I think I know the Chinese one

Liz

Mm-hmm

Hazel

Is it...the story is, like, there was a princess, who was doing something out in the gardens, I can’t remember what, that involved, like, hot water, and a leaf from the tree above her fell into her cup, and it was delicious, or something like that

Liz

That’s basically it, yeah, sometimes it’s a princess and sometimes it’s an emperor but basically...but drinking just hot water was a thing in ancient China, it’s supposed to be healthier than drinking cold water

Hazel

Ok

Liz

The Indian one is a little bit grosser

Hazel

Ok

Liz

The story goes that Prince Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, vowed to meditate for 9 years without sleep. Toward the end of the nine years he fell asleep

Hazel

Oh no

Liz

And when he woke up he was so angry that he tore off his eyelids and threw them to the ground, and a tea plant sprung up which, like…

Hazel

Oh my god

Liz

Tea leaves do look a bit like eyelids I guess, but that is an absolutely horrific story

Hazel

That is entirely horrific, I kind of love it

Liz

Like, I do like it more than the Chinese one just because it’s so visceral

Hazel

I know, I guess the Chinese one, like, makes sense, you know, you’re like, “oh yeah, I can see how that would happen” but that’s just like, hmm...that’s a hot take

Liz

Yeah. It is interesting that it’s Zen Buddhists though, supposedly it’s Zen Buddhists that took tea to Japan

Hazel

Ok

Liz

So there’s a Chinese book called the Chajing, which is just, which is sort of about...yeah, it’s basically considered the definitive text on tea for the time. It’s author was known as The Tea Saint

Hazel

That is amazing

Liz

And, yeah, based on this book, the tea ceremony was developed, which was then exported to Japan by Buddhist missionaries

Hazel

Wow. So there’s, like, a lot of, a lot of, I can’t think of the word, but you know when something originates in one culture and then goes to another and then ends up getting transferred back to the first one again but a bit different, and then so on and so forth

Liz

Yeah, a lot of cross-pollination I guess

Hazel

That’s it

Liz

Interestingly, apparently the Buddhists were using it, using tea to stay awake during meditation, because I guess it’s...if you don’t have coffee it’s the most caffeinated thing

Hazel

Yeah, it’s caffeinated, yeah

Liz

Which, I just love that because it kind of ties back to the story? It’s like, he couldn’t stay awake, and then

Hazel

It does

Liz

He made a thing that helps you stay awake

Hazel

Out of his own eyelids

Liz

Yeah, it’s best not to think too much about that part. So, the first European to write about tea was also a missionary, a Portuguese one who visited China. The writing about tea at this period, sort of the 1500s, is a bit odd though, like there’s all these rumours about this mysterious eastern drink, or possibly, like, salting the leaves and eating them after boiling them?

Hazel

Hmm, that doesn’t sound good

Liz

It really doesn’t. Just gonna eat some salty leaves

Hazel

Oh no

Liz

Like, I don’t like salad, but that sounds worse than salad

Hazel

That’s like, on the same level as British people trying to eat potatoes raw, right, when they first came in

Liz

Yeah and like, the leaves are so small as well, it’d be hard...you’d have to eat it with a spoon, which would just be horrendous

Hazel

Oh no, salty spoon leaves

Liz

I don’t think it would have got quite as popular

Hazel

Probably not, no. It’s funny to think about though, because it’s something that is just so commonplace to us today and then it just, yeah, it’s funny to think that our ancestors in the west, like, just had no clue about what to do with this exotic eastern beverage

Liz

So yeah, it sort of makes its way to the west through Dutch traders. You’ve probably heard of the East India company, there was a Dutch one as well

Hazel

Yeah, yeah didn’t they have a lot to do with the spice trade as well?

Liz

Yeah, we will absolutely do an episode on the spice wars, because that was a whole thing

Hazel

Mmm, there’s a lot to unpack there, right?

Liz

Yeah. But yeah drinking tea as, sort of, an elite activity, spread very quickly from Holland. Yeah, we’ve got, for popularity in Britain though, we’ve got Catherine of Braganza, you may remember her from forks. Yeah, she was Portuguese, Charles II of England, who she married, had grown up in Holland, so they introduced tea to Britain as well

Hazel

Basically a 17th century influencer

Liz

Absolutely. I mean, at this point the royal family basically are influencers, like, what they do everyone else does. There’s the story about wigs becoming popular because the king of England was bald and started wearing a wig, so everyone else started wearing wigs

Hazel

Oh my god

Liz

I can’t remember which king it is, and it’s also probably exaggerated, but it’s a heck of a story

Hazel

Mmm

Liz

And honestly if there’s one thing we’ve learned on this podcast it’s if it’s a good story then it’s gonna spread

Hazel

Absolutely, as it, you know, probably should

Liz

But yeah, so you’ve got the Dutch East India Company, and then the British one gets set up afterwards, but very quickly established a tea factory in Macau, which is on the coast of China

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

And, yeah, it just keeps spreading through a combination of very dodgy trade, because colonialism, and also just regular colonialism. But there’s a beautiful story, this one probably is true, about the British East India Company basically trying to find out where tea actually comes from, so they can end this Chinese monopoly on it, so the British Tea Comm...The British Tea Committee in the mid-1800s sends Robert Fortune undercover to China

Hazel

Oh wow

Liz

To find out how tea is farmed and processed

Hazel

Oh, I think I’ve heard, I don’t know if it’s this particular one, but essentially someone smuggling tea out of China

Liz

Oh yeah, that’s the guy

Both

This is the guy

Hazel

Ok. That guy

Liz

He also brought back Chinese tea experts

Hazel

Ok

Liz

And then you have in the 1820s, large quote marks here, “discovering” tea bushes just growing wild in Assam and Darjeeling, words which may ring a bell if you like tea, and combining that with this knowledge to set up tea estates in India, and Indian tea was, became a lot more popular than Chinese tea in Britain

Hazel

Ok, so tea was already, like, the tea plant was already in India but people just weren’t drinking it, or..?

Liz

The problem is, most of the accounts we have are by employees of the British East India Company

Hazel

Ok

Liz

So, like I said, the word discover

Hazel

Hmm…

Liz

Is certainly a choice that was made by some British people doing capitalist colonialism

Hazel

I feel like that can apply to a lot of the subjects on this podcast

Liz

Yeah. But, yeah, they found this tea, and then they went “I know, let’s grow some tea”, and then they got rich on tea

Hazel

What a surprise

Liz

So yeah, that’s the basics of how tea got to Britain, but I think I do have to mention, yeah, I’ve been learning about tea grading

Hazel

Ok

Liz

It’s a lot

Hazel

So I’m assuming that’s when you, like, separate the teas into, like, “this is the best tea, and this is the other tea”

Liz

Yeah, so you have OP, which is...I believe it stands for Orange Pekoe, which is basically “this is a whole, decent leaf”. That’s what you tend to get in loose leaf, vs tea bags which tend to be the lower quality stuff. And then it can be described as things like Flowery, Golden Flowery, Tippy Golden, which are all...those are, sort of, increasing quality. Tippy Golden is just the very tip of the lead

Hazel

Aww. That’s kind of charming

Liz

It’s tip and top

Hazel

That sounds like the name of a Jeeves and Wooster character

Liz

It really does

Hazel

Ah, it’s young Tippy Golden. Oh gosh I thought I gave her the slip at Aunt, Aunt Agatha’s ball last year

Liz

I tried to foist her off on Gussy Fink-Nottle but she doesn’t like newts. But yeah, so you can combine all these different letters to make the different grades. So the very very best tea is FTGFOP which, apparently there’s like an inside joke among tea aficionados that it stands for “far too good for ordinary people”

Hazel

That’s adorable

Liz

You can basically stick a B in front of any of those to just say “well it’s like that but worse, ‘cause the leaves are broken”

Hazel

Ok. So where, I mean where can you get this magical perfect tea? Like, is it available to…

Liz

I haven’t been able to find it on any of the places that I buy tea from, but I am only a pleb. Probably get it from Harrods or something

Hazel

Yeah, I bet

Liz

If anyone has any tips on the far too good for ordinary people tea, I wanna try it

Hazel

Let us know

Liz

I’ve been learning a lot about tea and which teas I like, and the subtle differences between different kinds, I wanna try the very very good tea

Hazel

Is that your life’s quest?

Liz

It is. So, yeah, you probably know about the...tea, especially green tea, is seen as a very healthy thing

Hazel

Mm-hmm

Liz

Probably especially antioxidants

Hazel

That does get thrown around a lot, like you see it on green tea boxes all the time, like, detox, or antioxidant, that kind of thing. So is that true?

Liz

Green tea does have more antioxidants and all of the good things. So basically the colour, the colour tea - so green, white, blue, black - describes how oxidised it is

Hazel

Ok

Liz

So green tea is hasn’t been oxidised at all, contains all of the good stuff

Hazel

Oh, ok, so black tea is like, it’s been dried, or..?

Liz

It’s oxidised rather than dried, ‘cause all tea leaves, certainly that we would buy in a shop, are dried

Hazel

Oh yeah, ok

Liz

But yeah, it’s...I’m gonna double check. I think I know this, but I’m gonna double check. Yeah the tea is...the leaves are exposed to hot air, and they oxidise in a similar way to if you burn something it oxidises

Hazel

Ok

Liz

Just less so because it’s hot air. So green is pretty much not oxidised, and then white is a little bit, and then blue, which is your oolongs, are described as semi-oxidised, and then black, it looks like that because the oxygen has done its thing

Hazel

Ok

Liz

And I don’t really understand how antioxidants work, but if you oxidise the thing it has fewer antioxidants, which makes sense, like, in my brain, because of the words, but I don’t really understand it. I’m not a chemist

Hazel

But I guess, yeah, you know, in words sense

Liz

It makes word sense

Hazel

It makes sense

Liz

Obviously now we also have a lot of, and I mean also then to be fair, as a kind of folk medicine we have tisanes, like, herbal teas. Yeah, I think the reason they tend to be referred to as teas rather than tisanes is, one, people know what tea is, but also tisane tends to be a much more, like, medical/herbalist way of referring to it. Like if I offer you a nettle tea

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

Vs if I offer you a nettle tisane. It’s the same stuff but one of them sounds like I’m trying to cure you of something and the other one sounds like a nice drink

Hazel

Yeah, I guess, I mean, we kind of refer to anything that is made by putting a plant in hot water as a tea, right? Like, I only learned what a tisane is, like, a couple years ago

Liz

One thing that I want to mention before I wrap up, because I realise I’ve talked a lot, so tea is made, generally, from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis, but there’s also kukicha, or bōcha tea

Hazel

Ok

Liz

Which is made of the stems and twigs of the tea bush

Hazel

Oh! Wow, ok. What’s that like?

Liz

I actually, I currently have some, because I subscribe to a tea subscription box, and they sent me some kukicha in my box for February

Hazel

Wow

Liz

And it’s a...it’s almost like lemonade honestly, like the

Hazel

What?!

Liz

There’s...there’s kind of an astringency to it, and then there’s sweetness

Hazel

Ok

Liz

It’s still a green tea, but it...yeah, it’s complex

Hazel

Tea: it’s complex. Huh, that’s kind of cool though, it’s like, it’s not just the leaves

Liz

Yeah, you can drink the whole plant

Hazel

Entirely drinkable

Liz

I mean, I haven’t come across the roots being used, but I bet you can use the roots

Hazel

Wow, tea is amazing

Liz

So before Hazel goes into the local larder I just want to say that we have a patreon, it’s just Bread and Thread. There is a patreon exclusive server where we talk a lot about crafts and food and things. There’s monthly recipes, and if you subscribe at ten dollars, pounds, etc, we’ll make a bonus episode just for you

Hazel

Woo. So, actually, my local larder today is accidentally relevant

Liz

Ooh

Hazel

Because it’s a Portuguese food. So this is gonna be a fairly short one because, like, almost all of the information I could find on this is in Portuguese, and I don’t speak Portuguese, so it’s going to be pretty light on the history side, but I just want you to know that this exists

Liz

Is that a general you or is it me specifically?

Hazel

You specifically and also everybody else. I mean, I assume if you’re Portuguese you know about it, but it’s not something that I’ve heard of before, and I feel like it probably wouldn’t be very well known outside Portugal. So this, I kind of found out about this from, I was thinking about, like, fish and chips, and I was like “well I wonder if…”. There tends to be a version of fish and chips for most places around Europe that are coastal, and I was like “I wonder how different fish and chips is around different places. So this is...and of course it has to be properly regional, you know, I can’t just be like “this is from this country”, this is local larder, so it has to be an actual regional food within that country.

So, this is from the Portuguese city of Setubal, which is on the coast, it’s south of Lisbon, about 45 minutes south of Lisbon, apparently, but it’s not as well known as other places in Portugal, because there’s not as much money there as there is in Lisbon at the moment, so it’s not as popular, like, touristically, but it’s been...it’s had a very strong fishing industry, basically forever, and apparently was a center of fish canning in the 19th century, which is interesting

Liz

That’s neat

Hazel

Yeah, it is kind of neat. And so, they have a very famous regional food that is very associated with the city, it’s called choco frito, which sounds like it would have chocolate in it, right, to our English-speaking ears

Liz

Yeah, my immediate thought is fried chocolate

Hazel

Yeah. It’s cuttlefish

Liz

Ok

Hazel

It is fried cuttlefish. It’s, yeah, apparently they, like, boil the cuttlefish with some herbs and garlic, marinate it in white wine and vinegar, and then, like, cover it in cornflour and fry it

Liz

That does sound delicious

Hazel

Which sounds pretty good, yeah. I’ve never had cuttlefish, but I have had squid, and it is nice, so

Liz

Yeah I would assume it’d be similar to squid

Hazel

Yeah, it sounds like it would be tasty. And normally it’s served with a lot of fries, like thin crispy chips, or rice or something, or you can have it as, like, a side just on its own. So, yeah, that is what choco frito is, and I just love the concept of, like, this famous cuttlefish thing. ‘Cause I’ve never really heard of cuttlefish being eaten before, but I mean now that I think about it it makes sense

Liz

Yeah, I guess in Britain your main exposure to the concept of cuttlefish is “oh it’s that weird hard thing you put in bird cages”

Hazel

Yeah, and sometimes you find it on a beach and you’re like “what is that”...and it’s a cuttlefish. So, yeah, that’s what choco frito is, and in Setubal there’s, there is a restaurant that serves it, that is also a small museum to the history of cuttlefish

Liz

Ok, you...the cuttlefish was interesting, and then you said museum

Hazel

There is a cuttlefish museum in Portugal

Liz

Now I have to go

Hazel

Yeah, I really want to go. This is the problem with researching new things in a pandemic

Liz

This happens every time

Hazel

Yeah, the roadtrip is expanding. So yeah, there’s a lot of places in the city that you can get this, apparently, because it is so, like, famous. In fact, it is so popular that it’s kind of a local icon now and there are, like, statues of it in the city

Liz

Statues of cuttlefish or of the dish?

Hazel

I don’t know, I haven’t been able to find any pictures of the statues. I just know that there are choco frito statues

Liz

That is wild, ‘cause a statue of a cuttlefish I kind of get, but of a specific dish is mind-boggling

Hazel

I think it’s probably cuttlefish related...probably. I dunno. Please, if you’re listening to this and you’re Portuguese and you know what the choco frito statues look like, send us a picture

Liz

Yeah, we need this

Hazel

I need to see. Yeah, so...and also, kind of linking in to the, when I talked about jellied eels I mentioned that most of the eels used for this iconic British, London, East End dish come from Denmark, or like, Holland, or like somewhere that isn’t Britain. So, they do still fish cuttlefish in Setubal, but they’re kind of small now, they don’t really get the big ones anymore. So the big ones that they use for choco frito actually come from India

Liz

Aww that’s kind of a shame, but also another tea connection

Hazel

But yeah, food connections, and I think that’s kind of a theme in a lot of places that have this, you  know, really popular historic food there’s like, you know, overfishing or overproduction of this thing means that it’s not able to completely make this food itself anymore

Liz

That is, it’s definitely something to think on

Hazel

Yeah, yeah, there’s a point in there somewhere

Liz

We haven’t found it, but it’s in there

Hazel

You know, it’s just food for thought, as you might say. Yeah, but anyway, I just wanted to talk about choco frito because I now know that it exists and could not keep that information to myself

Liz

I mean, I’m glad you didnt’. So yeah, if you have an episode suggestion or want to say hi, or want to send us pictures of statues of fried cuttlefish, you can email breadandthreadpodcast@gmail.com

Hazel

We’re also on twitter @breadandthread, so check out for pictures and links and things, and updates for when episodes come out

Liz

And also me posting hints on what the next episode will be because I like doing that I guess

Hazel

Oh yeah, that’s a fun game. And we will see you next time