Actually, kettle means kettle. A tea pot is the thing you put the tea into, pour the water from the kettle into and brew the tea. My family puts the kettle on frequently, I even do it myself here in the US.

I can't believe that awful show is still on.

Does anybody know if there is any significance to the nursery rhyme "Polly put the kettle on.." in regards to:
"Suki take it off again...They've all gone home." ???

PS:
I wish I had company to sit and fret with! It sounds very civilized...

To be honest, it's not a phrase I've heard since the days we used to put a kettle on a gas stove.

Ever since electric kettles took over, the phrase has been something like "make us a cup of tea, would you?"

The Royle Family, in this as in so many other things, gets modern life rather more accurate than Coronation Street. I mean, really: what industrial city in the West still has a clothing factory?

My mum being a Brit, I can tell you, without hesitation, that no self respecting Brit would have company over without putting the kettle on!! That's the first rule of business. And Brits of the old school still use a tea cozy on the teapot. Wouldn't want a cold cuppa, would you?!?!

Dreamer 2, I had no idea my alias was featured in a nursery rhyme. I am sitting here now having a cup of tea and I googled polly put the kettle on... turns out the origin is unknown but Charles Dickens had a raven recite it in one of his books. Polly was a pet name for Mary and Sukey was a pet name for Susan according to the site I looked at.

I'm a Londoner and, at 33, I don't really have a memory of the days before electric kettles.

And the phrase "put the kettle on" (either as a request for a hot drink or as an offer of one) is still used VERY frequently in ALL the circles I experience regularly. They may no longer need to go onto a stove but they still need to be switched on (in most cases).

I hear it in offices and when visiting friends and family.

It's not that people actually think a cup of tea solves anything but that the act of making/ drinking tea is such a very familiar comfort that it's an almost instinctive start to business meetings, visits to friends, good fun gossips or even much sadder and more difficult occasions.

But, just for the record, I can't STAND Coronation Street...

On the tea cosy front - I've never used one nor do I now know anyone who does. I recall seeing them once or twice in my lifetime when visiting very old people for tea.

I will admit to using a tea cozy. But my father gave it to me.

I love Coronation Street! I happen to live close to Canada and I can pick it up on the CBC station. It's on 4 nights a week and a 2-hour rebroadcast on Sunday mornings. Near as I can figure, it's about a year behind what's being broadcast in the UK.

They also call their evening meal "tea."

I just wish you could get a decent cup of tea at an American restaurant. Even the nice restaurants don't get it right. They need to "put the kettle on" - not run the water through the coffee maker.

My transplanted family definitely still "put[s] the kettle on"... and I grew up in New Jersey!

"Put the kettle on" is an expression heard all over the country and by people of all ages.

You will often hear phrases/sayings in Coronation Street that are unique to the north-west of England or northern England but this isn't one of those.

I have an automatic cordless kettle but still talk about putting the kettle on.
Electric kettles have been around for decades although you may possibly still be able to get the type you put on the stove.
I can confirm that, "I'll put the kettle on" is the standard British response to any crisis from birth to death.
I still use the expression "to leave the phone on the hook". When did phones last have hooks?

Have to weigh in with Kavey here and suggest that Flanner's way off beam - "put the kettle on" remains a ubiquitous phrase in British (and Irish) households.

Kayb95 - calling the evening meal "tea" is a cast iron U/non-U indicator. The working class (such as it exists, let's call it C2, D, E in more modern parlance) have their tea in the evening - in fact in this instance probably only Ds & Es do... even C2's are aspirational these days! (tongue firmly in cheek, folks... I'm not mk2 you know!)
Everybody else knows that the evening meal is dinner and only dogs and children eat dinner at mid-day.
Napkin vs Serviette is another famous marker.

Dr D.

My mother is from Yorkshire, my father, The Bronx....I can remember as a child hearing my mother say on many occasions "put the kettle on love". She still says it to this day. What's funnier though is hearing my father (from The Bronx) say it! Somehow the words and accent just don't quite mesh! I was born in Florida, but did live for a few years in Yorkshire as a young teen, and it never fails that my Florida/New York/Yorkshire accent becomes very Yorkshire-heavy when mom comes over and I ask her if she'd like me to "put the kettle on". So it's not just in the UK where this is heard, come to Tarpon Springs, Florida and I'll gladly "put the kettle on" for you!

PS I also use a teapot and teacozy when I can find it, if the kids have "put it away"!, then a nice towel will suffice, wrapped tightly around the teapot!

How odd that I've never heard my British mum in law use that phrase. Perhaps it's because once she left the UK, she traded a "cuppa" for a cappuccino and hasn't looked back!
Anyway, the phrase should now be "better plug the kettle in" instead of "put the kettle on."

Please, would someone explain what C2,D and E mean? Thanks.

Ah, but I (and an aunt as well) still use a kettle that goes on the stove.

One phrase I did learn recently is when one of our neighbors invited me in for tea, she apologized and said, "sorry, all we've got left is builder's tea," meaning the cheap stuff, not the quality teas she'd usually offer guests.

My kettle goes right on the stove as well. I did however, manage to conveniently lose the whistle! I can't wait to get out of this office, run home, put the kettle on and sit down with a nice cup of tea!

I know! All this talk of tea has me really wanting some. I think I'll go home and put the kettle on.

The electric tea kettles are relatively new here in the US. A few years back, they were extremely difficult to find. Now they are a little more common, but I think most Americans still have the old fashioned tea kettles.

"Please, would someone explain what C2,D and E mean?"

Glad you asked, Judy - because I was going to. Is it a job class distinction - like "blue-collar" and "white-collar" workers in the US?

Still done in my circle every day of the week.

Polly Put The Kettle On was published in 1797. The origin of "Polly put the kettle on" was based on the author having five children - two boys and three girls. There were constant arguments as the boys wanted to play soldiers and the girls wanted to play house! When the girls wanted to play without their brothers they would pretend to start a game of tea party "Polly put the kettle on" and the daughter, called Polly, would put the toy kettle on! As soon as the brothers left Sukey (or Susan) would take it off again! Their father was so amused by this ploy that he set it to words and added the music which were subsequently published.

On the class thing, sociologists now categorise from A to E with C broken into sub-classes.

C2: skilled working class - skilled manual workers

D: working class - semi and unskilled manual workers

E: those at lowest level of subsistence - state pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers

A, B and C1 are upper middle, middle and lower middle class, respectively.

There is a detailed manual classifying every possible occupation into one of these categories, but broadly the groups are divided as follows:

A - Professionals such as doctors, surgeons, solicitors or dentists; chartered people like architects; fully qualified people with a large degree of responsibility such as senior editors, senior civil servants, town clerks, senior business executives and managers, and high ranking grades of the Services.

B - People with very responsible jobs such as university lecturers, heads of local government departments, middle management in business, qualified scientists, bank managers, police inspectors, and upper grades of the Services.

C1 - All others doing non-manual jobs; nurses, technicians, pharmacists, salesmen, publicans, people in clerical positions, police sergeants/constables, and middle ranks of the Services.

C2 - Skilled manual workers/craftsmen who have served apprenticeships; foremen, manual workers with special qualifications such as long distance lorry drivers, security officers, and lower grades of Services.

D - Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers, including labourers and mates of occupations in the C2 grade and people serving apprenticeships; machine minders, farm labourers, bus and railway conductors, laboratory assistants, postmen, door-to-door and van salesmen.

E - Those on lowest levels of subsistence including pensioners, casual workers, and others with minimum levels of income.


The first three of these, the ABC1s, are usually grouped under the heading "middle class" and the remainder, C2DEs, as "working class."

LOL, this is so fun and interesting!

The work that goes into keeping up with all those classes

" I will put the kettle on " was what my grandmother would say the minute she saw me with a weepy face or if she heard my mother yell at me There was nothing that a cup of hot tea and a cookie wouldn't fix ..sigh.

Hmm, I've heard middle class Scots referring to the evening meal as "tea".
I'd say that nowadays the evening meal is commonly referred to as "supper". To me "dinner" would have three courses and wine.
"Builders' tea" is cheapish blended tea and comes in bags.

Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Suki and Sheila!!!!

I have such fond memories of my daughter, little more than a toddler then, dressed up in an apron and cap her great-grandmother made, singing that over and over with her Little Tykes kitchen kettle!

Mention of the teacozy brought back the memory when my employer brought over British engineers to assist in a project we needed to complete. Right there beside our Bun coffeemaker, was an electric kettle wrapped in the tea cozy. Very civilized!

Does anyone remember the Second World War skit in "Beyond the Fringe" where an old chap keeps popping up to reminisce about his wife coming out to the garden to deliver terrible news, and invariably his reply is "Never mind, my dear, you put on the kettle and we'll have a nice cup of tea."

Her final piece of bad news is "Rationing has been imposed with all that that entails", to which he replies: "Never you mind my dear, you put on the kettle and we'll have a nice cup of steaming hot water!"

By the way, I've used an electric kettle for forty years or so, and still say " Put on the kettle"

So if the ABC1s are middle class, where does the upper class figure in the continuum? A+, A++ etc? Here in Australia we like to pretend that there's no upper class per se. Has a discreet veil been laid over their existence in the UK too? What will Fleet Street do without regular royal scandals, bonking bishops, expired aristocrats found hanging in fishnet stockings and the Heir Apparent's latest pronouncement? Is nothing sacred?

Anyway, this might be pedantic, but how can you have a middle unless it's sandwiched between an upper and a lower?

oldie, when I left the telecoms industry 5 years ago it was still common to refer to the gizmos that provide a circuit to the exchange (for Americans, central office) as "switch hooks", and the process of securing a line as "going off-hook". We still use the term "hang up" even though these days most handsets rest horizontally. Likewise many people say they'll ring someone up instead of call them, from the days of manual exchanges when you had to wind a magneto handle to get the operator's attention.

I wonder how many people here have experienced a manual telephone exchange? My wife remembers growing up in a rural area where the local postmistress was also the telephone operator, and routinely listened in to the locals' calls. She suffered from asthma, though, so it was possible to detect a tell-tale wheeze on the line, at which point you'd break into your conversation and say "Isn't that right, Mrs D?", ending the problem (for now).

I wasn't aware that Coronation Street was still going - it stopped being screened on Australian TV years ago, presumably because we've become adept at making our own dreary soaps. If we want to watch an interminable British soap we tune in to "The Bill".

I can't imagine putting a tea cozy around an electric kettle--the cozy beongs on the teapot to keep the tea warm after the water is added. However, leaving a tea cozy on for a long time can cause the tea to become "stewed," unpleasantly strong to the taste. You can always tell when restaurant iced tea is not freshly made because of the stewed taste it acquires.

I just wish American restaurants would learn to serve hot tea in a pot WITH THE TEA BAG ADDED BEFORE THE HOT WATER!

At home I've used an electric kettle for years. I like the current model so much that I bought a second unit as a back-up. It comes in very handy when I need to boil water in a hurry for something other than tea, too.

Oh Neil, you are wrong about Corrie not being on TV in Australia! Granted it is running behind the UK and even here in Canada but they've just put it onto 5 nights per week so it'll catch up at some point.

It looks to me like the new alphabet class system is a movement towards a more North American view of things.. basing class on job and salary rather than social background. Maybe aristocracy (upper class) aren't included because presumably they don't work (??) Although I remember reading a few years back that with the new classifications, Princess Anne (as an athlete at the time) rated amongst the lower classes.

I use loose English Breakfast tea and pull it out of the tea pot after it has steeped for 3 minutes, and it never tastes stewed. My daughter made me three tea cozies for Christmas. It is amazing how much longer the tea stays hot in the teapot with the cozy wrapped around it. Here is the URL for the pattern she used. Each side is a different material, and so they are reversible.

Oops, posted too soon! Here is the URL for the tea cozy:

http://www.safeplaceministries.com/Tea%20Cozy%20Page.htm

laverendrye

YES! That sketch is the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread. The late (great, I say) Dudley Moore: "I'll never forget that dark day war was declared. I was out in the garden at the time, planting up some chrysanths..."

I saw them on Broadway in 1963 on my way to Europe for the first time.

Message to Dr Do Good:

I was just flipping through an old copy of the ghastly Nancy Mitford's compilation "U and non-U" and the more recent "U and non-U Revisited".

I was struck how all that old class-identifier stuff and the preoccupation with class sounded positively ante-diluvian.

Maybe such distinctions (serviette, lounge, etc) are still made today -- but are they made so religiously and with such deep feeling, I wondered.

On a lighter note: I recall a cartoon from Punch of 30 years ago, in the days when Butlin's holiday camps decided they would establish a division or product-line for a classier crowd. In the cartoon, a posh Butlin's client is telling her son, who is playing with working-class Butlin's regulars:

"Come inside Reginald -- It's time for your lunch and their dinner".

Sorry, OT, but tedgale, How goes it?

Robespierre: I saw them in "63 as well, in Toronto. My favourite line from the garden scene, which I often use when coming in from the garden is: "I was out in the garden, planting out some deadly nightshade for the Bosche..."

I was just reading through this thread for the first time and wondering why no one had mentioned Nancy Mitford on the subject of U and non-U. It doesn't surprise me, tedgale, that you were the one to make the connection.

And don't forget John Betjeman's How to Get On In Society, which poked fun at those trying to be genteel, but who give themsleves away by non-U speech ...

"Milk and then just as it comes dear?
I'm afraid the preserve's full of stones;
Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones."

Hope all is well with you, tedgale, and that you had a good holiday.

Anselm

Lavenderye and Robespierre,

We had the great good fortune to see Dudley Moore and Peter Cook (how I miss him!) on state in London in "Behind the Fridge." One sketch in particular had us howling with laughter--it was Moore as a newspaper reporter interviewing Cook as, I think St. Matthew. At one point Cook said he had to cut the interview short as "There's a night sale on at Herod's."

Sorry for hijacking the thread but must reply to kind inquiries from Anselm and Scarlett:

I cannot believe socialized medicine works like this but a meeting with the oncologist is scheduled only for Jan 17. Until then we sit tight. In the interim we are not idle nor gloomy: visited NYC and Washington DC over Xmas. More news when I have it. And again thanks for your concern

Curious as to the phrase "not my cup of tea" and is it relevant to this Brit mania for putting the kettle on?

Blimey, what rubbish. Some of you have gone rental. Even Americans put the kettle on to make a cup of tea. How else would they make it???? Why is it that some people assume that only we Brits drink tea????????? As an Englishman living in the US, I can tell you that millions of Americans drink tea made from boiling water poured from a kettle. I can't tell you the last time I was in someone's home who DID NOT have a tea kettle on their cooker.

And why would anyone assume life in the UK is anything like the life portrayed on an outdated soap opera like CORONATION STREET?????? Next, you will be asking if we still have chimney sweeps and buskers working the streets of London!!!!!

Cheers,
John G.

JohnG you have me chuckling at the mental picture of someone making tea without first boiling the water. of course you are right about that part of things... but you're wrong about Corrie! Outdated? No way! No chimney sweeps there... single mums, May-December romances, marriages in trouble, characters confused about their sexuality, Hindu weddings... more dramatic than your average neighbourhood, granted, what with a few murderers and bunny-boiling ex-girlfriends around, but certainly not outdated.

I haven't used a teakettle for 30 years. I'm not even sure where mine is - and I drink tea several times a week.

Ain't microwave ovens great? They even whistle (ding!) when the water boils.

"Even Americans put the kettle on to make a cup of tea. How else would they make it????"

Of course we either put the kettle on or plug the kettle in to make tea, but "put the kettle on" is not a typical phrase used in the US.

"And why would anyone assume life in the UK is anything like the life portrayed on an outdated soap opera like CORONATION STREET??????"

Have you ever watched an American soap? They are even MORE unrealistic (cloning, returning from the dead, mafia, time-travel, multiple personalities, long-lost siblings, espionage...) And not a regular looking person in the lot - every cast member is one of the "beautiful people."

...very interesting....

Here, in the US, every morning I always put the kettle on for my tea. My SIL, in the UK, plugs her kettle in - either way we never boil water in a teapot!

Kayb95,
you mean all Americans are not just like those people on Dynasty??
LOL I wonder how many people in far off lands see those old re-runs and picture coming to 'that' America

Dynasty was very tame - you should see the daytime soaps!

Neil Oz, that A to E categorization was invented by an opinion/market research firm to be able to view responses by economic category. Presumably, the upper classes do not participate in such mundane matters as asnswering questions about which brand of tea or deoderant they may or may not use.

Scarlett, that's exactly the show that came to my mind!

Quite bizzare view of a different culture. Works both ways I suppose.

Every time my wife asks me to put the kettle on I tell her it's not my size. Every time she groans. Can't think why.

I always get my jokes from Christmas crackers.

Please don't believe that life here in the UK is anything remotely like that portrayed in CStreet, it is simply nothing like it at all. As for the kettle business, I suppose we like any other hot drink loving nation drink tea and coffee and chocolate and cocoa and anything else that could need a kettle, therefore we all have one in the kitchen and even sometimes in the office, which reminds me enough work time for a cuppa...lol

Muck

Laura

How on earth do you pull loose tea out of the teapot after it's steeped?

As someone who lives "up north" in the UK, I can confirm that there are still people (and places) very much like some of the characters on Coronation Street. OK, it's a bit larger than life but real life would be rather boring. At least it has a lot more (tongue in cheek) humour than the southern counterpart, Eastenders - after watching a few episodes of that I firmly believe all Londoners to be gangsters or petty criminals (LOL).

Leaving out the upper class, I think the class boundaries are pretty hazy these days, as are some of the uses of language. We still "put the kettle on", even though it's usually to make coffee. We tend to refer to our evening meal as "tea" if eaten in, or "dinner" if we go to a restaurant. Midday catering assistants at schools are still "dinner ladies" unless someone decides to get PC and give them a fancy title. It's interesting how some of the everyday words and phrases used by one person can seem so odd to another.

Flanneruk, I work in central Leeds (for my sins) and drive past a whole street of 'clothing factories' every day, each looking exactly as if Mike Baldwin will walk out of them!
In my office we are asked if we 'want a brew' and then the tea is left to 'mash' before pouring.
M

Kate Fox's book 'Watching the English' is very interesting on the making and serving of tea as a social lubricant, much as Kavey points out. The first thing anyone in our family does after getting home from work or shopping (and especially a long trip away) is, precisely, to put the kettle on. No-one needs to be asked.

Tea-cosies aren't so common (outside National Trust shops) since central heating became widespread and more tea has been drunk in one-off, one teabag per mug format. Mind, I do notice the number of woolly hats that might as well have tea-cosies.

As for the soap operas, a variant occurred in EastEnders when Pauline (a matriarch character) found some family member working themselves up to tell her some news she wasn't going to like, and said with a combination of foreboding, resignation and menace "I'll fetch the biscuits, shall I?".

We have always had the kettle going in our house when someone came into the house of even if my mother came home after work. This was in the U.S.

My teachers were shocked when as a child we all were asked what we had for breakfast and I told her tea and toast. By her reaction you would have thought my mother was giving me whisky for breakfast. No child I knew my age drank tea, only grown ups and my family.

We were also seen as a bit eccentric to be drinking tea in 95F weather with our equally odd German neighbour. It actually cools you down...maybe we sweat the heat out with a cup of tea!

At work each area here in my Dublin office has a tea/coffee station...I have my 2 cups this morning already...now all they need is a cappucino Machine!

I recall French visitors being amazed at the ubiquity of kettles in UK homes - they claimed not to use them.Similarly for eye-level grills.
They just dont understand tea & toast.

PalQ - What a interesting thread you have started and I am quite enjoying.

I am British living in the USA and we most certainly "put the kettle on". That means here a tea kettle on the cooker or stove as it is called here. Electric kettles are not common. Coffee makers that is another story. Agree it is very difficult to get a decent cup of tea in a restaurant due to the fact the water is not boiled.

I have and use a tea cozy. Always pick up when in the U.K. often from the street market. The tea bag or tea leaves left in the pot overly long will steep the tea - the tea cozy keeps it hot.

Growing up when we were not at school we had our hot meal at noon and this was called dinner. Mum called the evening meal tea. What does it matter. My grown children all call the evening meal dinner. My husband with a German back ground who grew up on a farm calls the evening meal supper.

As a child growing up in Suffolk we sang the nursery rhyme "Polly put the kettle on Susie take it off again".

I know nothing about the new class system rating.

Curious about the phrase "it is not my cup of tea" - any one have a history lesson on this?

Regards,
Sandy

Oddly enough, it doesn't seem to be in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, but it must come from the notion that tea is understood to be very much a matter of personal taste, since using the phrase carries the implication that there is no value judgement involved - or at least the speaker would like you to think so.

Sheila, I have a permanent tea filter, similar to what is shown at this URL:
http://www.finum.com/l-engl/p02teedauerfilter.htm

The filter keeps the tea leaves from floating freely in the water and has plenty of room for the tea leaves to swell. After the tea has steeped for three minutes, I just dip the filter up and down in the tea a few times to rinse the tea out of the leaves and then remove the filter and discard the tea leaves. I then have perfect tea, with no leaves left floating in the pot. I also have a plastic permanent tea filter, and it works just as well. The little handles on the side at the top keep the filter from falling into the tea pot.

I live in the UK, and don't drink tea, which doesn't dissaude people from serving it to me. I've known my MIL now for 16 years, and she STILL asks me everytime I see her if I'd like a cup of tea. DH's aunts assume everyone in the world drinks tea and just brings me a cup, which I then have to force down.

And apparently tea cures everything from a mild cold to cancer to a death in the family! Doesn't matter what happens, you're always given a cup a of tea.

I loved having an electric kettle in the States--my mother couldn't figure out how I could cook past so quickly until she realised that I boiled the water in the kettle first. She has that kettle now, but still persists in making tea in the microwave.

As an exiled Scot living in Canada, I am probably one of the older participants in Fodors.com My grandmother had an Aga cooker which was a large range heated by coal. This served to cook all the meals and to heat the house. To make tea, she put the kettle on the Aga. My mother cooked with gas and she put the kettle on the stove. In addition, both had a moveable ring at the side of the fireplace. The kettle was put on the ring and swung over the coal fire that heated virtually every house in the country at that time. Hence, "putting the kettle on" made eminent sense. My wife and I still use the phrase on a daily basis.
Also, since my father and I came home for our mid-day meal, we always called it dinner. We had high tea at 6.00pm, which was, say, a salad with bread and butter, scones and jam, cakes and,of course, tea. Supper followed at around 9.30pm and again we had cake, sweet biscuits and tea. This probably explains why Scotland has the worst dental decay record of any country in the world and has the highest per capita heart attack rate of all European countries. Strangely, in my time there from 1938 until 1965, I never knew or saw a fat person. This is not the case nowadays.

Making tea in the microwave horror!
To make good tea, the kettle must be boiling and the water put in at once. We all learn at our mother's knee "Take the pot to the kettle, not the kettle to the pot!"

It has always slightly bemused me that electric kettles are considered something of a 'luxury' or 'spare item' in the States, and are often only considered in terms of making tea/hot drinks etc.

I'm not much of a tea/coffee/hot drink drinker but I couldn't imagine living without an electric kettle. Basically we use it whenever we want boiled water - pasta/vegetables/anything really! - as it takes half the time of putting a pot on the hob... A friend of mine who emigrated to the US considered it such a treat when she managed to track down a store that sold electric kettles.

(Incidentally, over here kettle means electric kettle - you would have to stress stove-top kettle if you wanted one of those - and a tea pot does not go anywhere near either electricity or a stove/hob!)

Living in San Diego, I had a kettle on the stove for many years. For a long time, electric kettles were very expensive here. You can now get a reasonably priced (about $35) Phillips electric kettle in Target. It is the same as the Morphy Richards kettle that was in the flat we rented last year in Edinburgh. Since getting this, we use it often, for lots more than just making tea, and I'm sure our tea consumption has increased. My daughter, now 16, has been a "tea Jenny" for years!

"Making tea in the microwave horror!"

My thoughts exactly. But it still comes in second to the horrid trip through the coffee maker. That's the absolute worst way to make tea.

On our first trip to England, we had our first experience with an electric tea kettle. "What a clever idea!" we thought. We wanted to bring one home, but the electricity thing prevented it. We looked high and low for one in the states. Finally found one at a specialty store - and it was expensive! They are a lot more common now.

Now if the restaurant industry would adopt them we might be able to get a decent cup of tea away from home.

"Please don't believe that life here in the UK is anything remotely like that portrayed in CStreet, it is simply nothing like it at all."

OK, as long as you don't think that life in the US is anything like Dynasty, General Hospital or Desperate Housewives.

I don't believe this.

Boiling water using gas, coal, wood, or electricity is acceptable.

Boiling water using radio frequency energy is verboten.

Are you insane?

I bought an electric kettle several years ago (Walmart) to take camping. Nothing takes longer than boiling water on a camp stove! It is now a permanent fixture in my kitchen, and the stainless steel stove-top kettle has been relegated to a high cupboard.

We first learned about the electric kettle from our neighbors, who hailed from Ireland and Scotland. My next-door neighbor, a very elderly Englishwoman, introduced us to the tea cosy. (I look at them on every trip to Ireland but haven't gotten one yet!)

It just doesn't make a good cup of tea - I don't know why. But, I've never had a good cup of tea from nuked water.

Got to agree about nuked water and tea. It's just not the same.

You can make tea in a coffee maker?!? How? Coffee boiled is coffee spoiled, but tea without boiling water is impossible. I am almost as shocked as I was when I realised that some people (that's a euphemism for Americans)use the hot water tap!!!

Laura I've never seen anything like your permanent filter. The jury's out on that one....

I have a Rayburn- the baby equivalent of an Aga. My aunts all had full kitchen ranges in their farmhouses. We were talking over the New Year about how Scottish Families used to amke a week's worth of porridge in one go, then put it in a drawer to solidify, then cut out a day's portion to warm up in the range over night. Aga's still don't heat houses (in the sense of central heating, although they often provided the only background heating in the old days. They keep a constant temperature, and have a hot plate and a cooler plate. You get special kettles with heavy very flat bases, and you fill them up in the morning and boil them, then transfer them to the cooler plate. It takes seconds to bring them back to boiling point after that.

In this house (very downmarket from a Perthshire farmhouse) there were ranges in teh kitchen fireplaces with a metal arm which swung over the grate (a sway- pronounced here in Aberdeenshire as a "sw-eye")

I went home for a hot dinner at lunchtime all my primary (grade) school days, then my family moved and I had to have school dinners- also hot. We also had a high tea at 5.30pm-ish when my dad got home from work. I don't remember a pre-bed supper tho'.

This is getting intriguing!

I just did a double-blind taste test with three participants, and none of us could tell which was microwaved water and which was heated on the stove.

Try it yourself, would you, and report back here? Rules: you have to use the same water source (we use city water that's been through a Brita filter), same vessel, same tea, same cups, same everything. Try it with as many people as you can round up.

I suspect that what we have here is either an old wives' tale, a prejudice, or some undisclosed variable.

How in the name of Victoria Beckham do you make tea with a coffee maker?? I just can't imagine it. Do you put your tea bags in the filter basket???

Many of you are spot on when you say that the reason tea served in restaurants in the US is terrible because the water is not boiled. Most restaurants get the water from a spigot attached to the coffee machine.

No, I do not watch American soap operas. I have a job. Most soap operas in the US are on the telly between 1-4 PM EST.

It is a travesty that one of our own English actresses, Juliet Mills, plays a witch on an American soap opera. She casts spells on people, raises people from the dead, gets chased by ax-murdering zombies, etc. I guess after her turn as Phoebe Figalilly (Nanny and the Professor)in the 70's, she is up for any kind of nonsense.

God Save The Queen

robespierre, I will most certainly try this test at home this evening! I'll use my daughters (my husband and son could care less about tea!) and since my in-laws decided they would stay with us for a MONTH, they will be participants whether they like it or not! I'll report back later. This should be interesting!

Sheila thanks for the explanation and information of an aga. I sort of knew what one was from watching Clarissa Dickson-Wright (One of the Fat Ladies) use one on her show but the additional info is appreciated. The oven part of it always seems so small, but I like the latch-type of handle on the door. I also like the brass or copper hinged covers (on some) where one would put the pots on for cooking.
When I buy my farm or country house I plan to have one, but god knows where I'll find an authentic one.

Given all this talk about kettle, is it safe to assume that throwing one over a pub is a sloshy past time by drunken blokes?

Robespierre, could I seek some clarification here. What I assumed was meant by using the microwave was putting tea and water in mug and zapping same; as opposed to just boiling water in microwave and proceeding as proper. Quid Iuris?

And mathieu, I think you must be misunderstanding the Tardis nature of an Aga. The "ordinary" one has 2 ovens and the dimensions are:-

Aga Ovens
Top Right 254mm(10")height 349mm(13 3/4") width 495mm(19 1/2") depth
Lower Right 254mm(10") height 349mm(13 3/4") width 495mm(19 1/2") depth
deep and, together 711 high

Not small at all

Heaven forfend!

I would no more put tea and water in a microwave than I would put it on the stovetop.

If that's everyone's objection to nuked tea, then I concur wholeheartedly!

"How in the name of Victoria Beckham do you make tea with a coffee maker??"

The tea isn't brewed in the coffee maker. The coffee maker is just used to warm (not boil) the water. Some commercial coffee makers have a separate spigot for hot (not boiled)water and they use that. But some restaurants run water through the coffee machine (without coffee in the filter) to get hot (again, not boiled) water. The warm water, with a slightly coffee taste, then sits on the warming plate until some poor, unsuspecting soul orders tea. It's truly awful.

I love a good cup of tea and drink it everyday - I make it at home. I never bother ordering tea in a US restaurant because it tastes horrible and I just get so upset that they can't do something as simple as boiling water.

sorry... didn't mean to repeat myself - Fodors trouble.

My son gave me a delightful tea ball for Christmas so that I may enjoy the lovely bag of apple tea he brought home from Harrods.

To "brew" tea in a coffee pot would only give tea an odd flavor. I have seen little pots that function like a coffee maker but brew tea - an unusual device to be certain

Sheila, Many teapots sold in Toronto now come with permanent tea filters.

I was taught to use only boiling water for making tea; but last month while walking along Kufudam in Berlin, a teashop handed out flyers mentioning boiling water kills the fragrant of tea. Does anyone know where this theory from?

"I would no more put tea and water in a microwave than I would put it on the stovetop"

The only kind of tea properly brewed on a stovetop - as far as I know - is true Indian 'chai'.

Milk, water, tea leaves, sugar and whole spices (such as cinammon, cardamom, star anise, clove) mixed in a pot ( a 'haandi' maybe ?) and BOILED for quite some time. Often served boiling hot in a glass.

I can't stand the taste of nuked water for tea, but I confess that we make tea every morning in a "coffee" maker. We run the water through as if we were making coffe, but put the bags right into the pot. There is no coffee taste because coffee never has been or will be made in this machine, there is another true "coffee" maker. I think it makes a very decent cup of tea, just don't leave the bags in the pot too long.

It seems that microwaved brew is hardly anyone's 'cup of tea' so to speak.

Robespierre - there's nothing wrong with boiling water in a microwave per se, it's simply not done over here because it will take longer than boiling the same quantity in the (ubiquitous) electric kettle.
I'd be surprised if the Uk & Eire didn't lead the world in domestic water boiling technology! You can get super-fast high performance kettles (the Ferraris of the kettle world) which will boil a litre of water -what's that a couple of 20oz pints? - in a minute or less. A microwave simply can't achieve this level of performance and sometimes we are simply in desperate need of our tea - a momentous crisis or a snatched five minute break from the routine of work.

Dr D.

Got it. I can only imagine how pulling that much power would work on our 110v mains, though. The double current drain would blow every fuse in the neighborhood!

(Please forgive the slight exaggeration.)

I have a Black & Decker electric kettle and it works great. Heats faster than a microwave. I'll never be without one again. When this one breaks, I'll be out at the store the same day to buy another.

Hi
English televison tends to have adverts every 15 minutes or so, and many times the papers have recorded 'power surges' during the adverts in particularly popular shows. This is purely the British public going into the kitchen and putting the kettle on for tea during the break!

Robespierre: I have a small Philips electric kettle sold as a 'travel kettle' (probably contains about a pint). Though designed for European mains voltages, it's worked perfectly well in the US, if a bit slowly. I can't do without a cup of tea in bed first thing.

OK

Fill the kettle with fresh cold water and bring it to the boil.

Meanwhile, swirl hot water around in the teapot (preferably china or earthenware). This warming ensures that the water will remain at boiling point when it hits the tea leaves.

Just before the kettle boils, empty the water out of the teapot and put in the tea leaves. Take the teapot to the kettle and fill it with the freshly boiled water.

Stir the tea briefly, then put the lid on the pot and leave the tea to brew for 3-6 minutes, depending on the size of the leaves (larger-leaved teas take longer). Pour the tea through a strainer into the cup, and then add milk, sugar etc.

You can serve a second cup from the same pot of tea, but after 15 minutes a new pot must be made - the same procedure all over again - as the tea will not only have cooled, but will have become bitter with excess tannin. Have ready slices of lemon for those who would prefer their tea weaker and without milk.

For some reason I just remembered this and had an urge to share it...!

My mother's mother, whom I never knew, liked her tea strong (this was back in Ireland in about the 30s/40s/50s) and she clearly had no comprehension of the etiquette surrounding the noble art of tea making.

Every night she would take out a huge metal tea-pot-come-stove-kettle (I don't think you can buy these anymore, I've certainly never seen one), boil the water, put in the tea and then leave it on a low heat overnight to STEW. This would be then kept warm throughout the next day, giving her a days supply of tea so strong it would take the enamel of your teeth (I'm guessing that she didn't have anywhere near pearly-whites!!)

Suffice to say my mother drinks extremely weak tea!

Quote "Pour the tea through a strainer into the cup, and then add milk, sugar etc."

Here's another problem - my mother-in-law insisted that you must put the milk in the cup before the tea. Again, it may be a class thing but she wouldn't have any of my arguement that the amount of milk might depend on the strength of the tea!

Maria: I believe that the milk went in first in order to avoid cracking fine china when pouring in very hot liquid. I don't think that it matters today.

"You can serve a second cup from the same pot of tea, but after 15 minutes a new pot must be made - the same procedure all over again - as the tea will not only have cooled, but will have become bitter with excess tannin."

If you brew the tea leaves in one of those metal or plastic tea filters, you can remove all the tea leaves after the pot is brewed. That way, the tea doesn't keep getting stronger and you don't have the bitter tannins problem. You just have to drink the entire pot before the tea gets cold. Perhaps the tea cozy isn't such an old-fashioned idea after all.

My mother was another of those who liked her tea strong. She said that you should be able to trot a mouse over it.

Maria H -
antelactarian or postlactarian is indeed another of those famous U/non-U markers.
I actually believe that milk in last tastes better but a chemist friend of mine went to great lengths to prove to me that this was impossible to distinguish. He reckons I'm probably simply trying to justify my exalted view of myself!

Dr D.

At least if you put the milk in last, you can see it changing colour and stop before you put in too much! As my mum-in-law had it so weak, it probably didn't matter. the joke was it was so weak it was fornight tea!
I didn't dare to tell her that my daughter usually makes it with a tea bag in a cup...

My daughter and I joke that we need a shade card for our tea, so we put in just the right amount of milk.

One sure way to know your water for tea wasn't hot enough (when using a tea bag) - when you pour the water on the bag in the cup and the tea brews at the bottom of the cup and the water at the top of the cup stays clear.

You just know you're in for a lousy cup of tea when that happens!

Barbara, I work for a (UK) design company, where we use a colour system based on "Pantone" numbers. It's common practice when you offer to make the tea, for designers who think they're funny to give you a Pantone reference number for the shade of 'beige' they want their tea to be.

Kate, LOL!

Kate, I'll never look at my green tea in the same way again. Now if I could only get that damn song out of my head!

I'm enjoying this thread, but I admit I'm one of the philistines who likes their tea made in the microwave. I grew up using milk in my tea but dropped that habit when an office I worked in 30 years ago had no refrigerator. My sister's version of making a cup of tea involves boiling water and then practically waving the tea bag over the cup - she can get three cups out of one bag! I like mine a LOT stronger than that!

On t.v. stereotypes - a woman I know from Dartford, Kent loves the American show "Friends" and I told her it is NOT realistic! Four people living in large apartments in NYC with what amounts to low-wage jobs? I don't think so!

True! I lived in NYC right after I got out of college. Large apartments were rare and expensive. My roommate and I lived on the 4th floor of a Brownstone in Brooklyn and paid $1000/month rent (back in 1988.) It was a small apartment, but when we had friends over who lived in Manhattan, they thought it was HUGE compared to what they had - and such a bargain!

I'm curious about the apparent "novelty" of electric kettles in the U.S. I've never bought anything but living in Canada and was wondering if it's because of our 'colonial' ties that they are so easily available. I'm not sure if anyone puts the kettle on the stovetop here anymore.

My mother-in-law, whose ancestry is German but many generations ago, calls my lunch 'dinner', and my dinner 'supper'. Has caused many confusions over the years coordinating family events.

Also, can anyone tell me why I drink my coffee black but must have my tea with milk and sugar? I simply can't drink it any other way - although I once tried the lemon on the side of my plate, then still put the milk in. My friends still talk about it.

rickmav I am in Canada and sometimes use a stovetop kettle, as does an aunt. I also have an electric one.

I think the expression "Put the kettle on" just generally means putting it on to boil... doesn't matter whether that means "on" a stove top or turning it "on" by plugging it in.

That Friends thing is similar to the situation where a hard-up bookseller can afford a house in Notting Hill.

Last night on Corrie they were using a white plastic electric water heater - now from above posts i know that 'to put the kettle on' means not necessarily to put the kettle on the stove, but just to make tea. I thought it weird that folks were always putting the kettle on the stove. Tea aficianados apparently require only the water to be boiling, regardles of how it boils, which makes sense - boiling water is boiling water it seems. And it seems Brits are still really into tea. I wonder if the Irish have Irish Tea to go with their Irish Coffee?

I also lived in Manhattan for a few years. "Friends" wasn't that unrealistic because many people in NY have rent-controlled apartments. I know a woman (a margarine heiress) who lives in a 15-room apartment on Park Avenue, paying $2500 a month in rent.

One of my sisters sublet her Manhattan apartment for 20 years. She was paying $800 a month, but subletting it for 4 times that. She finally had to let the apartment go last year.

I think I remember them mentioning on an episode of Friends that it was a rent controlled apartment. Otherwise, theres no way they could have afforded it.

"white plastic electric water heater". That's the most hilarious description of a kettle I've ever heard. To me, it sounds like the words of a Martian. Bit like calling a cooker a "silver metallic electric food heater". LOL.

I do find it strange that electric kettles seem to be a novelty to Americans from this post. To people in the UK and Ireland, they're as common - and as essential - as having an indoor toilet, hot running water and a TV!

Kate
London

For those Americans, or others to whom they are a novelty, electric kettles come in all shapes and colours. No longer are we restricted to metalic, traditional kettle shaped ones but there are now plastic ones in all sorts of strange colours. As Kate said, they are an essential addition to any UK home - we can't manage without one!

For what it's worth, when I did a houseswap to Canada last summer, my exchange partners in Vancouver had a kettle to put on the gas hob. Most of us now use an electric kettle because - at UK voltages - it's so much quicker. The latest thing is a kettle with a built-in water filter. London water is so chalky that this would be a real boon - I'm getting sick of descaling every few weeks.

And for the person trying to get a song out of their heads try these:

Oh, the factories may be roaring
With a boom-a-lacka, zoom-a-lacka, wee
But there isn't any roar when the clock strikes four
Everything stops for tea

or

I like a nice cup of tea in the morning
For to start the day you see
And at half-past eleven
Well my idea of Heaven
Is a nice cup of tea
I like a nice cup of tea with my dinner
And a nice cup of tea with my tea
And when it's time for bed
There's a lot to be said
For a nice cup of tea

Another one to hum all day - soory it's a bit long

RIGHT SAID FRED by Bernard Cribbins

Right said Fred, both of us together, one each end and steady as we go
Tried to to shift it, couldn't even lift it, we was getting nowhere
And so, we, had a cup of tea

Right said Fred, give a shout to Charlie, up comes Charlie from the floor below
After straining, heaving and complaining, we was getting nowhere
And so, we, had a cup of tea

Charlie had a think and he thought we ought, to take off all the handles
And the things that hold the candles, but it did no good, well I never thought it would

Right said Fred, have to take the feet off, to get them feet off wouldn't take a mo
Took it's feet off, even with the seat off, should o' got us somewhere but no
So Fred said lets have another cup of tea and we said right-o

Right said Fred, have to take the door off, need more space to shift the so and so
Had bad twinges taking off the hinges, and it got us nowhere
And so, we, had a cup of tea

Right said Fred, have to take the wall down, that there wall is gonna have to go
Took the wall down, even with it all down, we was getting nowhere
And so, we, had a cup of tea

Charlie had a think and and he said look Fred, I've got a sort of feeling
If we remove the ceiling, with a rope or two we can drop the blighter though

Right said Fred, climbing up a ladder, with his crowbar gave a mighty blow
Was he in trouble, half a ton of rubble, landed on the top of his dome
So Charlie and me had another cup of tea and then we went home

Kate: What would you call that plastic cylinder that Corrie Street folk were heating water in - a kettle? Would you differentiate between that kind of kettle and the old type kettle that goes on the cooker top? To me it was a water heater but i realize that sounds daft perhaps.

PatrickLondon and MariaH, unfortunately(?) I don't know those songs but I'll be in London next week so perhaps I'll ask someone to recite them for me.

FWIW, most people I know have an electric kettle. (They're available at most home goods and department stores.)

I'm off to make a mug of Yorkshire Gold--now if only I had that great Yorkshire water, ach well.

The white thing you saw would be a jug kettle.
You can see some at http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Domestic_Index/Small_Appliances/
or http://tinyurl.com/5jp6q

They come either with a cord (like the old style electric kettle) or cordless, where they sit on a stand which is plugged in. Jug kettles usually come with a water filter and switch off automatically when the water boils.

Thank you Patrick London. I have been following this thread totally mystified as to why there would be such a cultural difference between British and American water boiling technology. If it is true that it is slower to boil water in a kettle on a stove in the UK, then I get why one would want an electric kettle. Until now, I have thought they would be handy for dorm rooms and offices but couldn't imagine why a person would want one in a kitchen.

PalQ, sorry if it sounded like I was taking the mick, indeed a kettle is simple a device with a lid and a spout that you use to boil water. Matters not if it's a plug-in kettle, or a stove-top kettle. Equally it can come in all shapes and sizes, with water filters or without, self-switching off or not, plastic, metal, you name it. But no British home would be without one, and I'd wager than 95% of the country has the plug-in rather than the stove top kind.

I even have a mini plug-in kettle I take on holiday with me - can't miss that early morning cuppa!

I don't know anyone here (in Ireland) who uses tea leaves. They just use Nambarie (or some other brand) tea bags. Most then brew the tea in a tea pot, after boiling the water in a kettle, or make one mug if it's just for themselves. They certainly don't consider tea making an art form--it's like calling pouring a glass of water an art form.

I personally use leaf tea because teabags use the small broken leaves called "sweepings" in order to brew quickly. I think that you get a better cuppa with leaves but chacun a son cup of tea.
I find that American friends make more of a song and dance about tea, possibly because it's not such a common drink as it is in Ireland and the UK. As you say, it's drunk by all ages and classes and is taken for granted.

PatrickLondon and Maria, OMG, I haven't heard those songs/jingles for years and I'm singing along!

Now I'm confused. How do Americans boil water if not in a kettle?

Sheila, HI! Americans boil water either in the microwave or in a pot on the stove. As water is boiled mostly to cook something in - eg pasta, rather than make tea, this works for most people.

I had always used an on-top-of-the-stove kettle. After falling in love with the electric kettles that we used at self-catering cottages in Ireland I started looking for one here in the US. I was lucky and found a stainless steel one. Advantage: It doesn't stain on the inside from water deposits. Disadvantage: The exterior gets very hot. I never boil water on the stove anymore and I gave the old kettle to my son when he moved out.

Sheila, mostly in a kettle on the stove. I never heard of an electric kettle until my husband's cousin moved to the U.S. from England many years ago and couldn't find one in the stores here.

I use a kettle to boil water and they still seem to sell a lot of them in my local homeware stores. I do just boil it in the pot if I am making pasta, however. My sister used to have an electric kettle but now doesn't have anything which drives me batty when I am at her house and there is no way to boil water but in the microwave.

This isn't very efficient, it takes longer to boil, I think, than just on the stove, but it's also inconvenient as you need to find a special container for the boiling because you can't use metal, and then there is no handle -- or if there is, you can't grasp it because it's hot, also.

I don't have an electric kettle because there's no need for one with a stove and a regular kettle (I only have a gas stove, so it heats it quickly) and I try not to have too many things around cluttering things up when unnecessary since I have a small kitchen.

Christina, my sister gave up her stove top kettle some time ago. When I have a cup of tea at her house, I have to boil water in a small stainless steel saucepan. That is far better than microwaving it!

(Now I am wondering what the heck we call our stainless steel, on the stove burner, pot for boiling water. I am so confused at the moment I will have to check with DH when he gets home. Blame my horrible cold and related medicines for brain dysfunction!)

Micro may not be as efficient but it saves energy - at least in my latest electric bill the company's energy saving tips said to use microwave over stove as it was more enery efficient.

Okkkkkk........

So, setting the microwave to one side, at least temporarily, how can it be more efficient to boil water in a kettle on the stove than in an electric kettle??

May I ask some of the kettle experts to tell me something about my kettle?

It's an old copper kettle which a cousin bought in England in the late 50s or early 60s.

She and her family lived there for a few years when her husband was in the US Air Force. She loved antiques and curiosity shops, so I'm sure she picked up the kettle at such a place.

She gave the kettle to my mother, and I inherited it.

Obviously it was much-used, but even with all it's dents it polishes up beautifully, and I love it!

Was this a typical boil-water-for-tea kettle before the advent of the electric ones? I hope this isn't a totally stupid question!

Byrd

Sheila, I have no idea whether it is more efficient to boil water on the stove than in an electric kettle. I have never felt that it was particularly inefficient, but I admit to never having tried an electric kettle. I don't think people use the stove because it is more efficient. Most people I know in the U.S. have just never had electric kettles and have never felt the need for them.

I tried a small semantic experiment, to test whether this expression is generally understood.

From my computer I wandered innocently into the kitchen and said; " I feel like some tea. Would you put the kettle on?"

Indulgent spouse: "Certainly -- I'll make it."

Moments later, I observe a saucepan on the gas ring.

I: "Don't you use an electric kettle?"

Spouse: "We don't have one."

I: "What about that one with the avocado-green plastic handle and lip?"

Spouse: "That's at the cottage. You ONLY use a kettle at the COTTAGE!"

Moments later I hear the hum of the microwave.

I: "I thought you were boiling water on the stove."

Spouse: "That's water for the tea. The microwave is for heating the water that warms the teapot. That's why the teapot is in the microwave."

Teapot removed from microwave, the heated water is poured down the sink. The teapot is filled with boiling water from the stove.

Tea steeps. I look around plaintively for the tea-cosy -- there is none.

How long has this been going on? Why did I never notice?

I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear my trousers rolled....
(T.S. Eliot)

Pay attention that your electric kettle in the US isn't plastic lined, it makes the water taste plasticky and awful. It really should be stainless steel lined so you won't get a bad taste.

I was told always to use fresh water and never reboil it by my British friends who, yes, always say "let's put the kettle on" whever they come in the door.

I think my plastic, or whatever but not stainless steel, electric kettle is faster than boiling water on the stove in a kettle. The water does not taste plasticky or awful.

oh, well that is good, maybe yours is made of superior plastic, water I have tasted from plastic lined kettles tastes bad to me. The same as plastic lined thermos bottles, yuck.

"I even have a mini plug-in kettle I take on holiday with me - can't miss that early morning cuppa!"

Kate, I would love to find a mini electric kettle for traveling here in the US. Hotel rooms here have little coffeemakers in the rooms - and they make a rotten morning cup of tea.

I my electric tea kettle!!

Kay, have you considered an immersion heater? They'll boil a cup in a minute, are very inexpensive, and light to pack.

We say put the kettle on(non electric) and use a coffee cozy over my coffee press. It's shaped like a cat.

Statia, send me a picture of your dog!

"Kay, have you considered an immersion heater?"

That's what I travel with now and it does a fair job - much better than the coffee maker. But it takes a long time before the water actually boils. And if the hotel doesn't have real coffee mugs, my arm gets tired dangling the heater in the water so it doesn't touch the sides of the plastic/styrofoam cup.

I have used my plastic electric kettle for over 20 years and have never detected any sort of off taste from water boiled in it. Indeed, most electric kettles sold in Canada now are made from plastic.

I've always been amazed at the rarity of electric kettles in the U.S. American friends of ours will come to Canada to buy one.

Well you never know what inferior plastic is used here in the US, maybe it is imported from a third world plasticier, or maybe it is just the one's I have used, no worry.

Tonight, on the about 1-yr delayed Corrie, Norris, the obnoxious busy-body who cashiers at the local newsstand, said, when he felt he had to come up with an excuse to leave the room, "i'll see if the kettle is boiling." Now before this discussion i would have thought he's going to check a stove boiling kettle, important because you don't want to leave it boiling on a stove - but now know that kettle probably refers in this case to an electric water-boiler. The main thing i learned from the many intriguing posts is how much tea is still an integral part of British life, and, how seriously folks take tea making. It's cool!

PatrickLondon - thanks for posting the words to those tea songs - used to sing them ages and ages ago. Oh dear I am showing my age.

As a British person living in the US I don't mind using the kettle on top of my gas stove (cooker in UK).

No one has mentioned the one advantage to the electric kettles used in the UK is that they will switch off automatically once the water is boiled so no worry about boiling the oxygen out which I understand makes the tea taste awful. Agree about not using the water over for the same reason.

To those posters who have actually purchased an electric kettle in the US do they switch off automatically?

What fun this thread has been.

Sandy

Most of the U.S. kettles do turn off automatically when the water boils.

We're on our second kettle. Got used to them when we attended summer sessions at Cambridge years ago. Wouldn't be without one, now.

WOW! Another mind-boggling aspect to tea making - letting the water boil too long takes the oxygen out and is detrimental to the tea taste. Now I'm not dissing that at all, it's just another bizarre aspect to the art of tea making I would have never thought of!

And to think...
I tend to make tea when I'm too lazy to make coffee!
I'll have to rethink my method of just nuking the mug of water with tea bag! (I've even been known to add a little milk and/or honey before it goes in.
Horrors!

What a fantatastic interesting thread. And having said that I am so glad I do not drink tea! What a workout

Dreamer2, there is such a difference between the taste of tea brewed with loose tea leaves and tea from a teabag! To me, the difference is even more than the difference between freshly brewed coffee and instant coffee. Once I had tea from loose leaves, I could never go back to teabags.

A teabag full of English Breakfast Tea, however, is so much better than a teabag full of other types of teabags, such as Lipton. (But nothing compares to loose tea!)

Oops! I meant to say teabag full of other types of TEA, such as Lipton.

SandyBrit, yes, the kettles do shut off automatically--so much quieter than the kettle whistling on the stove.

Laverendrye, electric kettles are readily available in the U.S. (Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Amazon etc.). Perhaps your friends just like to visit you and beautiful Canada.

Cigalechanta, our tea cozy is shaped like a big black and white cat. It's so nice to see you back on the board!

Now for any New Yorkers out there, do any of you "put the water UP for tea?" My in-laws use this phrase and I've never understood it.

"What a fantatastic interesting thread. And having said that I am so glad I do not drink tea! What a workout"

LoveItaly, you're right. This is another Fodors classic. However, it doesn't quite touch a nerve for me as I'm a coffee drinker. Now that I think about it, I suppose the coffee addicts could really get going on the art of making the perfect cup ... where do you keep your coffee beans, do you grind your own or buy them pre-ground, do you use a filter or a coffee press ...

No, I'm not trying to hijack the thread. Keep talking about tea! It's wonderful.

Anselm

I use a coffee press and have a bowl of au lait every morning. Lately I have been drinking green tea during the day.

"there is such a difference between the taste of tea brewed with loose tea leaves and tea from a teabag!"

I know tea leaves are better, but I have a hard time making it correctly with loose tea. It always seems to come out bitter tasting. I must be doing something wrong. I'll have to give it a go again.

Neither my electric kettle nor my mom's shuts itself off after the water boils. Both are US, but are a little older. But mine whistles, so I can unplug it as soon as it comes to a boil. And it boils so quickly, by the time I get my tea cup out and pop the toast in the toaster, the water is boiled.

And I always drink my tea from a china cup or mug - I'm convinced it tastes better out of bone china.

"What a fantatastic interesting thread. And having said that I am so glad I do not drink tea! What a workout"

But it's worth it for that perfect cup of tea. I used to drink coffee (years ago) but now I'm an avid tea drinker - don't even like coffee now.

When I visit England, I always bring back as much tea as I can stuff in my suitcase, carry-on, purse, etc... Fortnum & Mason breakfast tea is my favorite.

Neither my husband nor I can cope with the taste of heated plastic containers. We have a stainless electric kettle which keeps the water sweet tasting. We never use plastic cups or plates for the same reason.

Use bone china for your tea and you will see that the water tastes much better with no aftertaste.

You should use half and half with cane sugar for the best taste and never squeeze the tea bag into the water.

DancintoMusic:
Is that an invitation? !

The truth is, I love the real Mccoy whenever I'm travelling, and a proper "tea" is local to the area. And I love the idea of a communal fret, as described by both PalQ and Scarlett!

KayB and Nocinonut hit upon the other point of finesse. What is the vessel from which the proper tea is most enjoyed? Mine must be a china cup, or IF a mug, only one with a thin rim. And I hate any plastic tops on hot beverages "to go." The styrofoam is bad enough (I much prefer paper), but I hate feeling the warmth of the plastic sippy cups; I feel like I can taste melting plastic.

Hi dear readers: well truth be told my mother, aunts, grandmothers drank tea (as well as coffee).

I think (but maybe not) I know how to make tea.

Put the kettle on the stove. Put very hot water from the tap into the teapot.
Boil the water in the kettle. Put tea into that little "thing" (not tea bags").

When water has come to a boil in the kettle empty the hot water in the teapot. Put that "little tea holder or whatever you call it" into the teapot.
Pour the boiling hot water from the kettle into the teapot. Let it steep a few minutes.

Pour tea into china cup(s). Oh yes, first remove that little tea holder (what is the name of that?).

Add sugar and if desired cream. Or if not cream perhaps lemon. Or not.

Drink.

Than I shudder. Honesty dear Fodorites I can not stand tea. But sure send warm wishes to all that thrive on it.

Now a hot cup of coffee - oh yes! I cannot start the day without my coffee. Which I drink in a Lenox "Solitare" mug.

What is that old saying? Different strokes for different folks.

But if the truth be told I still love the saying " a cuppa of tea love?"

But no thanks!

> remove that little tea holder (what is the name of that?).<

Tea infuser?

I think so...usually the little silver "cage"?

I read somewhere that you should start out with cold water from the tap - that it has more oxygen in it.

And although I like half and half in my tea, I have been chastised many times for this. Evidently, the Brits consider cream in tea repulsive. It must be milk. (But I can't give up my half and half).

LoveItaly: LOL, very funny

Use hot water in the kettle? I have never heard nor done that

OKAY...now after 169 posts on this topic, and perhaps it was already mentioned, but do you put HOT or COLD water in your kettle to make tea? I always use cold water.

Not only the Brits consider cream in tea repulsive. But chacun à son goût!

Actually, I think LoveItaly was talking about warming the pot with hot water from the tap, not putting hot water in the kettle.

Now, this isn't a rule, but wouldn't do that. I always boil the kettle, use some of the water and boil te kettle again.

in this country the hot water fills off a tank and teh cold straight from the main- so we don't drink anything from the hot water intake.

...a whole new dimension to "put the kettle on" can be observed in the British picture "Vera Drake" which was released this week. An harrowing film of deep emotion and involvement.

It's set in fifties London. Highly recommended, go and see it at The Curzon Mayfair!

oh yes, sheila! I misread LoveItaly's post. Hot water into the teapot, not the kettle!

m_k2, some English people may still say "an 'otel", and I suppose that Americans would say "an 'erb", but "an" harrowing tale?

Thats right!! Hot water into the teapot. Cold water into the kettle (and bring that to a boil).

My paternal grandmother born and raised in London loved tea I have just given up on it. Too many details LOL. Besides, really do not like tea.

But family members that only drink tea say I make it perfect. But what do I know? Cheers to all

It's simply correct grammar, to write any word beginning with 'h' with an "an" before it.

absolute nonsense. "An" is only used when the following word starts with a letter which is not a consonant and "h" is a consonant. And, yes, I checked before I posted.

That's what my generation has been taught at school, it's English grammar, and correct, but please don't miss my point about this fantastic film.

Well I don't think you're right; but to the movie.

It's been getting very mixed reviews, but for its content rather than the performances, I think.

m_kingdom2: recently I completed a chapter for my dissertation, and my son commented on the title:

"blah, blah, blah (sparing you the boring details)...An Historical Perspective"

He said it should be "A Historical Perspective" - just as sheila mentioned.

It is generational, and it is still debatable, but my mentor preferred that I use "An" and so I did!

The content at times was distressing, indeed a woman sitting near to me had to light up mid-performance (which is now banned in cinemas, for fire safety reasons as much as others). However, it had humourous moments, and was very heart felt and had lots of human interest.

Also, it's worth noting that the primary location for the film was in Islington, which has now become a "designer" (in New Labour sense) area. Shoreditch which was once as poor as can be is not the place for those sporting Hoxton fins to congregate.

m-kingdom2 - please dear, translate your last post for us Americans. Truly I do not understand and I read it three times.

Or does one need to have a cuppa of tea to translate : ?? A good 2005 to you.

The film is set in Islington which has changed markedly since the fifities - it used to be a poorer area, now it's full of media types with money.


As for the lighting up - that's self explanatory I hope.

I was stunned by the film 'Vera Drake'--I saw it before Christmas and can't get it out of my mind. An amazing achievement, I think, of acting, writing, and directing.

In American English, the 'an' before the 'h' is variable.
We don't usually say 'an hotel' though I know the British do, we say we're going to 'a hotel'. However, we
cultivate 'an herb.' And, it's 'a horror.' When the 'h' is pronounced (and we pronounce it in 'hotel'), we use 'a.'

It probably goes back to the Romance languages such as French, when some aitches are considered unsounded, and others not, though you really can't hear any of them.

I was just thinking

we also say 'an historical perspective' but 'he's writing a history of Britain.'
strange.

elaine: Yes, strange ~ a linguistical predicament!

elaione, I suspect that's because the rhythm tends to make the 'h' in 'an historical' less stressed than the 'h' in 'a history'.

Of course, what's considered 'correct grammar' changes all the time, but I have great difficulty believing that within living memory any school's English class, anywhere, prescribed 'an' before all words beginning with an 'h'. I'd be surprised if anyone could prove otherwise by reference to any of the great English writers of the last 200 or more years. As Sheila puts it (more economically), "absolute rubbish".

m_k2, a final helpful note. If, as I suspect, your aim is to replicate British-English spelling, it may well be 'humour' (not 'humor'), but it's 'humorous' (not 'humourous'). I can sympathise with any American who finds this illogical, though.

It is very rare that I disagree with sheilaritchie but I must challenge her assertion -- which she did trouble to corroborate before posting -- that you can NEVER use "an" to preface a word starting with H.

When the tonic accent falls on the first syllable, the H will be clearly aspirated. (hence: A history)

But it is not so clear when the accent falls later in the word -- "An historical account of an hotel" sounds and looks fine to me.

It may be an archaic or pretentious usage -- it certainly is not customary NA usage -- and I don't do it much myself. But I recognize it and accept it and have seen similar examples in writings of the great stylists -- Henry James, for example.

I cannot quite see writing "An harrowing experience", 'owever.

William Safire, author of a 'on language'column in the NYTimes for years once addressed this exact example, of a historical or an historical. I can't remember what side he sides with but it's an (a) hysterial thing to ponder!

Q: In your [6/24/04] column regarding "back in the day," you quoted [a source's e-mail]: "I teach at ... an historically black college." I believe that [this school] is "a historically" black college. My understanding of the "rule" is that if the "h" is aspirated, it is preceded by an "a," and if the "h" is silent, it is preceded by an "an."

R: I thought so too, but I checked with Fowler's Modern English Usage, 3rd ed., 1996, It says that although "historical" has an aspirated "h," it finds "abundant evidence" of "an historical," and concludes "the choice of form remains open."

Opinion is divided over the form to use before h-words in which the first syllable is unstressed: the thoroughly modern thing to do is to use "a" (never "an") together with an aspirated h (a habitual, a heroic, a historical, a Homerica, a hypothesis), but not to demur if others use "an" with minimal or nil aspiration given to the following h (an historic, an horrific, etc.) ... At the present time, especially in written English, there is abundant evidence for the use of "an" before habitual, historian, historic(al), horrific, and horrendous, but the choice of form remains open.
E-mail: onlanguage [at] gmail.com

Mimi

I chekced in Fowlers and couldn't find anything. Where are your references. What I got came from my trusty Chambers Dictionary

I love this kind of thing. When you can't be vacationing in France, come to Fodors, learn how to make tea, and get into an interesting discussion about the English language.

Being married to an English language editor, I have been repeatedly coached that there are certain circumstances where a writer has a choice. The plural of euro (debated on a couple of other threads on Fodors) and the use of serial commas come to mind. Reading cigalechanta's citation from Fowlers suggests that this question of "a" or "an" before a word starting with an "h" is another example.

Where there is a choice, consistency may be more important than the choice itself. If I use a, b, and c commas (which I do), I should use that style throughout whatever it is I am writing. During my working years, I was irritated by my employer's insistence that certain words be capitalized. They seemed to think that capitalizing words made them important. I thought it made a document harder to read. To their credit, they were at least consistent.

Anselm

Anyone read the book "nice cup of tea and a sit down"?

I read it recently and really enjoyed it though I think it's one of those where you'll either feel the same as me or utterly hate it!

http://www.nbierma.com/language/column/questions.htm

Sheila !

http://www.editingandwritingservices.com/A-An-B4-Historical.html

All these grammar lessons have my head spinning. I think I need to go put the kettle on!

from cigalechanta's cited website
http://www.editingandwritingservices.com/A-An-B4-Historical.html


"Just do your best to be a good communicator and move on!"

For proper design of your tea-tasting experiments make sure to consult R.A. Fisher's Design of Experiments (1935). Determining whether a lady can distinguish between milk added before or after the tea is poured is the classic example of experimental design. A more recent book on the topic is The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutioned Science in the Twentieth Century by David Salsburg.

elaine - good point. The important thing is to convey your meaning clearly and in a manner pleasing to the ear.

Sheila, the very first article ("a, an") in my Fowler's deals with the issue, but it's a 1966 edition I picked up at a second-hand bookshop and have been too cheap to replace. In brief, while "an" has traditionally been used before words beginning with a silent "h", the number of such words has been steadily decreasing, and in Fowlers' view "the distinction ... will no doubt disappear in time". So, 'an hotel' has largely given way to 'a hotel'.

Fowlers' goes on to say, "Meantime speakers who like to say 'an' should not try to have it both ways by aspirating the 'h'." (As in "harrowing", perhaps.)

On the milk-before(after)-the-tea debate: while I don't drink tea I've found that adding milk to instant coffee before pouring in the hot water maks for a mellower flavour (instant coffee needs all the help it can get). This was a tip from my daughter, whose job at the time involved driving an espresso machine.

I like putting it in after pouring - it gets my tea bag all messed up otherwise.

But seriously, I searched through my cupboard and found some loose tea I had purchased in London a while back. I've been experimenting (non-scientific!) with it and you guys are right. Loose tea does make a better cup of tea!

Re aspiration: Does anyone remember the old Monty Python skit in which John Cleese comes into a shop and (I think) announces sententiously at the counter:

"I should like to buy an 'alibut."

My bedtime reading last night was Agents and Patients, the early Anthony Powell novel (1936).

In it, Maltravers' hostile wife, Sarah:

...began to clear up the tea-things.

"Shall I leave the tea?" she said. "or shall I put the kettle on and make you some more?"

tedgale, I might be mixing up the episodes, but that sounds like it's from the Fish Licence. John Cleese was trying to buy a licence for his pet 'alibut named Eric. ("I chose him out of thousands. I didn't like the others, they were all too flat.") When the man he was speaking to called him a looney, he named several people who had unusual pets, including Marcel Proust, who had a pet halibut. "So, if you're calling the author of 'A la recherche du temps perdu' a looney, I shall have to ask you to step outside!" It was hilarious.

On the subject of Anthony Powell, my late father-in-law once gave me a photocopy of an article called "A Guide to A Dance to the Music of Time," by James Tucker. It's a 12-page who's who of every character who appeared in the 12 novels. It was published in The New Review in August, 1975. It's a very handy reference.

Anselm

I'm also reading a very good new Powell biography, in which the author helps identify many real people, some of them quite close friends of the author, who clearly inspired characters in Dance.

Powell, who liked to be mysterious, always publicly denied such connections. A little hard to believe, given how directly his own life and loves echo the life-story of the series' protagonist/ observer.

Neil_Oz

your daughter was "driving an espresso machine"?

How many miles to the gallon do they do? Just wondering whether I should trade in the Roller for something more economical!

Dr D

Last night I was watching the Extreme Makeover Home Edition behind the scenes show and they have a new Englishman on the construction crew. They were rebuilding a home in rainy Seattle and they showed the poor Englishman desperately trying to find a good cup of hot English tea with milk. In the US, in general, it's not an easy task. So I imagine it was even more difficult in the mecca of designer coffees.

And this desperate crazed tea-deprived English bloke finally got his tea from what appeared to be a 7-11 or gas station type convenience store and appeared to be as happy as a pig in a poke. He was demanding 'English tea' now is English tea different from what he have in America? Our Lipton's must be the same as in the tea fatherland.

But they showed him happy before he tasted it.

Tea in England is definitely different than tea in the US. I know it all comes from India or Ceylon, etc... but the US manufacturers somehow get it all wrong. Even common UK brands like PG Tips and Typhoo are far superior to US brands like Lipton.

We bring tea back from England by the suitcase - as much as we can pack and carry.

And I think by "English" tea, he meant regular black tea - not the green, Chai or fruit-flavoured teas you find here in the gourmet coffee houses.

Some markets in US carry Red Rose and Tetley teas which are good. Avoid Liptons if you can, it is horrible.

BTW, I just bought a GE Brand cordless tea kettle at Walmart (I know...). It comes with a flat electric heating pad so you can carry the kettle around w/o a cord. It is stainless steel and boils water really fast, I used it this morning for the first time.

Welcome to the electric kettle club. Aren't they great!

Thank you! Is it the EKC club? I want to be the door monitor.

That chap on Extreme Whatever should have been told there's a specialty shoppe in Redmond (a short unicycle ride from MS HQ) where all brands of British tea are sold, usually at prices surprisingly close to most Tescos. (I guess we scared 'em about import taxes back in Boston.) Lots of other things are available too, especially, now that the big night is drawing nigh....Haggis...

Not that he would know what to do with the great chieftain o' the puddin' race anyway.

PalQ, I think that's "happy as a pig in mud" (that's the more polite version where I come from). You can BUY a pig in a poke (pocket), which means that you're buying or accepting something sight unseen.

Several posters have used the term "Chai" as a distinctive type of tea.

1. Can anyone enlighten me as to how it differs from other teas? and

2. (turning as I habitually do to amateur etymology): Where does this word come from and is it, as I assume, related to the slang term "cuppa char" for a cup of tea?

PS: I was watching the Russian film "The Russian Ark" the other night and noted that the Russian word for "tea" appears to be "Chai" or something pretty close to it....

Chai is the same sound as "tea" Chinese where tea comes from.

Most "tea" in many languages: French,German, Italian,russian,...ect., all sound more or less the same as in Chinese, but from different dialects.

The words for tea in many languages are indeed very closely related. Char is another of the many Hindi words that were adopted as slang in English (e.g., dekko, doollally, dhobi, chit), hence char-wallah (meaning someone who serves tea), but you don't hear it very often now.

Incidentally, I note that the UK will soon be making the final repayment to the US for its WW2 debts. I've seen the question raised - did anyone ever pay compensation for the tea that went into Boston Harbour? It must have racked up a tidy sum in interest by now....

Well, who would have thought? This is National Hot Tea Month in the US. Here is the link ...http://www.census.gov/pubinfo/www/radio/pa0112.htm

What a great thread! As a tea drinker, I just had to add my 2 cents worth.

I never boil my water in the microwave. A foam forms at the top and leaves an ugly ring around the mug. Yuck.

I use a teapot rather than an electric kettle (which my parents use) because it adds a nice touch of blue to my stovetop.

Getting a good cup of tea in a restaurant is almost impossible. I always wait till I get home.

Every day begins and ends with a strong cup of tea. I'll admit that I use teabags -- Tetley British Blend -- which is nice and strong, and WHOLE MILK - no exceptions. Strong tea needs whole milk -- in my humble opinion.

I have also made tea in a hotel room by putting the tea bags in the pot and running the water through the machine.

I always travel with my tea bags. As a minority in the coffee crazy U.S., finding anyone with a decent tea bag is close to impossible. Tea is not herbal tea -- which I am offered all the time.

I once ordered a cup of tea with milk in a restaurant in Gubbio and received a cup of cold milk with a tea bag in it. The poor boy caught hell from his Mom who was the cook.

I have a wonderful book titled "A Decent Cup of Tea" by Malachi McCormick, that I found in an antique store, that is enlightening and wonderfully funny. Cold water in the teapot, please!, and don't boil all the oxygen out.

I love my tea and put up with all the guff I get about the entire tea process. If I started to use loose tea and an infuser, my family might just disown me.

One of my favorite Monty Python skits involved a couple of down-on-their-luck chaps comparing their miserable upbrings. One of them complained that "every morning I had to drink cold tea from a cracked cup". The horror!

Ta, for now.

Neil Oz - In Michigan the term is definitely 'as a pig in a poke' but we ignorant midwesterners may be using it wrongly. As for Chai - it's the ubiquitous word for tea all over Asia - including India where the Brits may have got it from. If you've ever been in India the refrain 'tea - chai' is heard everywhere from streets vendors, who i recollect use both words together as they announce their wares.

For you tea lovers...a blog

http://teachatee.blogspot.com/

A foam forms at the top and leaves an ugly ring around the mug

Then there's something with a contaminant in it - either the water (if it's not filtered) or the vessel (if it's not rinsed adequately).

I have been nuking water for 35 years, and I've never seen a ring. Ever.

Robespierre -- you are obviously a Philistine. Nuked tea?! Mon dieu.

Tea isn't only good to drink but is a wonder to look at and to smell too. As a child, I was lucky to have spent many years with access to a tea estate in Africa. Those memories are filled with the endless sight of emerald rolling hills and slopes in the cool highlands of Kenya. I have never seen so many shades of green together, like an enormously beautiful, patchwork quilt extending to the horizon, which probably accounts for why I like that colour to this day.
Picking tea is a laborious job but the people who do it get skilled to the task very quickly. The tea we drink consists of the unfolded bud together with the next 2 leaves of the top of each stem of the tea bush. The bushes have to be constantly trimmed to waist height in order for the pickers to have access to the leaves. The picker's quick eyes spots the appropriate tips and plucks them off, until a handful is collected which is then tossed over their shoulder into a large basket hung over their back. When the basket is full, the tea is weighed and allotted against the picker's name for payment, the basket emptied into a truck and the picker sent out into the field again.

Within hours of picking, the tea buds and tips begin to wilt and ferment. What follows is a heady, earthy, scent that is very pleasant to the nose. As kids we would pluck handfuls of leaves and keep them in the warm cupboard that housed our water heater (we called it a 'geezer' - don't ask me why ). The heater would come on in the early hours of the morning while we all slept and drive the scent around the house. We would then leave the wilted leaves in the sun to dry to a crisp after which we'd crush the leaves and brew our own cup. Can't imagine doing that today, but when you're 10, it was great fun !

Only the leaf part of the plucking is used for regular tea. The stem part is usually discarded, or else used to make a stronger tea. The discarded stems used to be packaged and sold cheaply as "Teakataka", a riff on the Swahili word 'Takataka' which means rubbish.

I could do with a cup now.

To me, "chai" is simply a translation of "tea" of any kind. My parents were born in India and although we always spoke English at home hindi words just happened to be used consistently for some things...

"Chai" as it's used more recently by Western retailers refers to a specific variant of tea which apes the way tea is sometimes but not always prepared in India - strongly brewed with a variety of spices which can include all or any of cloves, cardamom, cinammon, ginger, cumin, pepper plus lots of sugar and lots of milk.

Can't stand it myself...

PalQ, now I think about it, I can summon up an image of a pig nestling in a nice warm (but very big) poke - why wouldn't it be happy?

Buying a pig in a poke means to buy something when you don't know what it is. A poke is a bag

Happy as a pig in shit is a whole other kettle of fish.

Sheila, about the phrase "kettle of fish" ... When I lived in Newfoundland, some people said "a quintal of fish" instead of "a kettle of fish." I asked what a quintal was and was told that it was a wooden box that would hold a hundred-weight of salted fish.

That was, of course, in the 1970s, long before the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery, so Newfoundlanders were still selling large quantities of salt fish.

Obscure bits of English language use will never cease to amaze me.

Anselm

Mathieu, you weren't calling the water heater a 'geezer' but a 'geyser', as in the boiling hot water that spurts out of the ground in volcanic countries like Iceland. I think it must have been a brand name for an early water heater - some of the gas-powered ones in Britain were prone to volcanic explosion on their own account!

But where and how 'geezer' for a man (in either the British or American senses) comes from, I'm none the wiser: unless it has the sense of an old boiler that's stopped working properly but still gurgles away to itself (like me) ...?

According the the OED "geezer" meaning a man comes from "guiser" meaning a mummer.
The one that interests me is the American "guy". To me, a guy is a stuffed dummy which is placed on a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night.

My friend Dr. Chasuble who is Scottish in origin, uses the word "poke" to mean a paper bag, eg. a poke of chips.

PatrickLondon : LOL ! I think thats definitely where 'geezer' comes from !

This is absolutely fascinating. And Mathieu, your last posting was a peek into a world I never knew existed. Beautifully said, I can picture the hills of Kenya in my mind (though truth be told, in my mind they look something like Hawaii...way too high.)

My ex-husband loved all different kinds of tea, and would order them from Canada. His favorite was called Russian Caravan, which I would always refer to as Old Camel Nose, because they smelled about the same... It's no wonder we divorced.

Friends who live in Paris introduced me to: The Melange Fauchon, which I guess is their house blend, and quite delightful. And also packed in their Crystal tea bags, which I believe are made out of silk (or some type of synthetic).

My co-worker, who originally hails from Dublin just sent me this link today (timely!) on how to make a pot of Irish tea

http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/2Kitch/rBreakfast.html#Tea

I'm at work and was dying for a cup of tea this afternoon. I got the hot water from the spigot on the coffee machine, then put it in the microwave for a minute to come to a boil. And although it sort of "fizzles" when you put the teabag in the water, the tea brewed OK. It would actually have been a pretty good cup of tea if I hadn't have had to use Coffee-Mate instead of milk (none around, of course.) That kinda ruined the effect.

Kaybe95 -- my most sincere condolences in regard to your poor cup of tea. I used to carry whole milk to work everyday for my tea. As I mentioned, I got a lot of guff from my coffee drinking coworkers, but it was more than worth it.

As for the fizzle, that's it exactly! A fizzle, a foaming when you put in the tea bag. Mine always ended up as a ring around the mug. I'm not alone.

Have a nice cup of tea when you get home tonight.

Here is another site for anything you want to know about tea and tea stuff!
I love those cosies of every design you can imagine (almost).

I got so excited about the cozies, I forgot the url:

www.devotea.com

So my life is reduced to being excited about tea cozies......

SeaUrchins, you are easy to please, LOL! Tea cosies indeed.

Time for a trip to Italy I believe

You are soooo right!!!

I just booked a super-cheap trip to London for February ($202.19 airfare & $82/night at Copthorne Tara on Priceline) and thanks to this thread, I plan on bringing back loose tea this time instead of my usual tea bags. I'm a convert!!

Anselm: What a coincidence that you should be writing about "quintals" on the first thread I read after walking in the door from the airport.

Just off a plane from St John's Newfoundland where today I did a session on the Fisheries Act at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

A quintal (originally a French word, of course)is indeed a hundredweight of fish, although my French-English dictionary defines the term "quintal" as "112 livres" -- i.e. 112 pounds.

But how 112 pounds = a hundredweight is nowhere explained!

Fodors savants: any explanation?

Mathieu: Your description of Kenyan tea plantations recall exactly what I saw in Sri Lanka, on a trip to Nuwara Eliya -- the hill station to which the British repaired in the hot months preceding the arrival of the monsoons in April.

NE was run-down and sad (the old race course is now a public garbage dump) but the descent back to Colombo was one of the most thrilling things I have ever seen. We started off from NE in dense, dense fog, down hair-pin switchbacks -- temperature around 50 F/ 10 C.

Slowly, as we descended, the fog started to thin and we realized we were coming down through clouds. Eventually the clouds were blown away and we saw stunning green all around us, on wild, precipitous hillsides. The tea fields, despite the jagged terrain, are precisely terraced and meticulously maintained -- we saw not one weed in any field.

As only the top leaves are picked, each plant is always in full, brilliant leaf.

Each field has a name-plate with the name of the estate --"Devonshire", "Drumlanrig", etc -- the exact acreage, the date of the last pruning, the date of the next planned pruning and so on.

Often, in the distance you see a great waterfall -- a single powerful thread of water dropping 200 feet and then exploding into a churning river below. In some places, accumulated subterranean waters gush out of a roadside standpipe, where Tamil pickers (not Sri Lankan Tamils but poor Tamil immigrants from S. India) come to wash clothes, cars and themselves.

And of course we stopped at a 19th C. planter's bungalow, now a roadside tea pavilion, to buy a selection of teas for our hostess in Colombo and to refresh ourselves (and more important, our tireless driver) with a pot of the best of the local brew.

Re quintals and hundredweight the hundredweight (cwt) of 112 pounds is based on the stone. 1 stone=14 pounds; 1 quarter=2 stones; 1 cwt=4 quarters, or 8 stones, or 112 lb.

That's why a long ton or 20 cwt is 2240 lb and a short ton is 2000 lb.

Isn't metric much simpler!

tedgale, a coincidence indeed. It is odd that a hundredweight is 112 pounds ... and that gets me thinking about long tons, short tons, and metric tons, which I have never understood either.

The interesting thing about quintal was that the people I met in Newfoundland pronounced the word as "kennel" rather than "kwintal," which is the way that I would have pronounced it.

There are quite a few French words and phrases that have been anglicized in Newfoundland. Baie d'Espoir, surely one of the more desolate places in Canada, is ironically (or more aptly) pronounced "Bay Despair" in Newfoundland. And my favourite: L'Anse aux Meadows, the site of the Viking settlement, is a corruption of L'Anse aux Méduses, or Jellyfish Cove.

Hmmm, this really has nothing to do with tea, does it? I guess I'm easily diverted.

Anselm

Oh my word, here I am wondering about tons and laverendrye is explaining it!

The coincidences continue.

Anslem

While going through our mother's effects a couple of years ago, my sister happened across a 1941 fruitcake recipe demanding "1 gill rum". Investigations revealed that a gill was 1/4 of an Imperial pint, or 5 oz.

When Australia went over to metrics in the 1970s the official spelling for a metric ton was mandated as 'tonne' to distinguish it from the old long and short 'tons'. It's pronounced the French way, too, not "tun".

Neil: "Tonne" in French is almost identical to our NA pronunciation of ton/"tun". Even closer in Quebec-French pronunciation.

I think there must be a singular Aussie "tonne" pronunciation.

Do you rhyme it with Ron???

OK, tedgale, you got me - my French lessons are but a dim memory. The Aussie pronunciation it will have to be then (yes, to rhyme with "Ron").

Until very recently spirits were sold in pubs in the UK in measures related to gills. The standard English measure was 1/5 gill, and the standard Scottish measure 1/4 gill. The Scots caught on and most pubs moved to 1/5s, but not all and you'll still see signs in some warning that the customer is getting large measure.

kayb95, may I suggest The Tea House in Neal St (off Covent Garden). There's also a branch of Whittards in Covent Garden Market itself and one of Drury Tea and Coffee in New Row nearby. Or having visited them, you could just drop into any supermarket....

We normally bring home either Whittard's or Fortnum & Mason breakfast teas. There's a Whittard's close to our flat on Kensington High Street. Haven't been to the Tea House, yet. Thanks for the suggestion.

Ive heard that there is a cult following of Pauline fowlers tea cosy? Anyone know anything about this?

I suspect that they would be talking about the teacosies on her head. (The knitted type of hat she wears is called a "teacosy")

Pauline Fowler didn't wear tea-cosy hats (that was Ethel Skinner), just the same old cardigan. The cult object was the Sacred Fruit Bowl. Which duly smashed in her final altercation with Sonia.

How, never mind "Put the kettle on", Pauline's great line - faced with some unwelcome news that clearly demanded a long and miserable conversation - was a face like a wet week and "Right. I'll fetch the biscuits, shall I?"

The proper American way to make tea, restaurant style, is this:

On a small plate, put a tiny metal tea pot, a slice of lemon, and a tea bag still in its paper wrapper. The bag should ideally be between five and twenty years old.

Fill the pot with water at approximately 140 degrees fahrenheit and close the lid.

Place the plate on the kitchen pass-through and wait fifteen minutes before serving.

The customer then opens the tea bag, and stuffs it down into the lukewarm water, watching as the bag slowly immerses. After about a minute, pour the rusty-looking water into a cup, add lemon and drink. It tastes of tannin and unhappiness and being in the wrong place. The other diners will probably think you're a bit hoity-toity, too.

We have an electric kettle at our completely American house, which boils the water so fast I'm not ready for it. I do know how to make a proper cup of tea, and even how to spread Marmite on toast.

But the best kind of English tea comes from an urn the size of a steam boiler and is served by a fat lady in a powder blue apron.

I live in Maryland but I do want Eastenders thanks to Utube. Whenever the late Wendy Richard would offer to "put the kettle on", I figured she knew someone needed to sit and muddle over an issue that was bothering them. One of my co-workers once got a call from her adult "babied" son and he asked to come over her house to for a bowl of soup. She thought that was odd. I told her in England that's what they call "putting the kettle on." Sure enough, the next time I saw her, she said he came over, pleaded his case, and walked away with a check in his wallet. I like to think of the custom as a way to lend an ear, not necessarily money to someone who needs to talk over a cup of tea or coffee and biscuits.

There was a famous line for Wendy Richard when some relative came in and they set up a "Mum, I've got something to tell you" scene, and she just hitched her cardi round herself again and said with a voice of doom "Right. I'll fetch the biscuits, shall 1?"

What a nice old thread to pull back up. Enjoyed it quite a lot. Especially the posts by some of our friends who are here only in memory.

Re: Putting the kettle on

I'm Scottish and have only ever known electric kettles, but would still say put the kettle on, meaning to switch it on to make a cup of tea. When checking into a hotel room the first thing I would check is that there was a kettle, cups, tea bags and some milk. Imagine my horror on my first trip to New York to discover my hotel room (4star) had no kettle! I called housekeepimg and asked for one but we appeared to be speaking different languages. After much confusion, and being passed to several members of staff they finally seemed to understand what I was asking for. Housekeeping staff finally appeared at my door with a ... Coffee percolator! Seriously! i tried to heat water in it but it tasted foul, so there was nothing left to do but hit the streets of Manhattan in search of an electrical store. So my first purchase on arriving in the Big Apple was an electric kettle, so after long days of shopping I could go back to my room and put the kettle on!

Re: Tea v Dinner

Growing up in a working class family meant that dinner time was at noon (usually a sandwich or similar), tea time at 6pm ish (main meal of the day), and we would often have supper at about 8 or 9pm which was tea and toast. As I grew up and mixed in different circles I started calling dinner lunch. I mostly call my tea, tea but sometimes dinner, and eat a bit later so dont tend to have supper at all. Just the other day my husband was away on business and we had the following exchange of texts:

Him: I've ordered room service for my dinner"
Me: "Enjoy your dinner, I'm about to make my tea"
Him: "I have dinner, you have tea????"
Me: "Yes, tea is when you make it yourself, and dinner is when you pay someone to make it for you"

Simple

And don't even start with the "dinner, supper, tea, high tea" debate. Makes my brain hurt.

A lot of my early years as a kid where in Kent and Hants, dinner was at around midday (a proper cooked one) and tea was around 5 o clock which was usually sandwiches (sometimes with soup).

>>I'm Scottish and have only ever known electric kettles<<

"You'll have had your tea?"

(Sorry).

PatrickLondon: "you wot?????"

Travelers - high tea can now be booked online at the Burrell Museum. (Glasgow)
I have had my tea.

Ah, violetm, I take it you didn't listen to "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue"; it was a running gag as a conventional Scottish greeting.

"You'll have had your tea?"

Speaking as someone from Glasgow, that expression is only used by people from Edinburgh!

Speaking as someone from Glasgow, that expression is only used by people from Edinburgh!

Morningside, to be more specific.

wow - this English if not British fascination with tea simply boggles my mind.

Coronation Street folks are generally loutish scumbags but even the toughest folks on The Street alwayws say "I'll put the kettle on" as a response to any problem - say some serious discussion about some problem - it's always "I'll put the kettle on and everything will be all right!"

Even the hippest of younger folk on The Street - even these types who should be chugging Red Bull energy drinks say 'I'll put the kettle on' - that is one thing that shocks me - younger hip folk would still routinely sip tea.

But the whole meticulous cumbersome way of making tea - steeping it and all just seems way overblown - heck a bag with good tea in it and boiling water is all you need - no need to be a rocket scientist to make a good cup of tea - yet Brits when crossing the pond inevitably clamor that 'we couldn't find a decent cup of tea!

Meanwhile scuse me I gotta go put the kettle on!