Cream tea
 

Fighting talk here. I love clotted cream http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...jam?CMP=twt_gu

MISSPRISM, excellent description of "cream tea," similar to one I enjoyed in Devon a while back. Even drank the tea which I never do at home...

Guardian backs the whipped cream concept. Hopeless, it has to be clotted. If you have whipped cream you have to have butter to keep the calories up. :-)

Well, of course you can have whipped cream, but then you might as well go the whole hog and have tinned peach slices with evap. milk. And a plate of winkles.

No clotted cream! Heresy!

Lee Ann

"<i>you might as well go the whole hog and have tinned peach slices with evap. milk. And a plate of winkles.</i>"

Patrick, along with a wise traveler you are a masterful guardian of proper culture.

Patrick I love your addendum. But you forgot the tinned mandarin oranges rather than tinned peaches for the sophisticated palate.

And then there are those teeth we keep hearing about.

>> But you forgot the tinned mandarin oranges rather than tinned peaches for the sophisticated palate.<<

Special guests only. FHB.

Am I the only one who thinks it is hilarious that the photo for this article is taken by someone named "Sarah Lee" ?

FHB, now there's an expression I haven't heard in years.

If you are going to have tinned peaches, and maybe mandarin oranges, with evaporated milk, then you ought to have jelly. That will require sandwiches (jam or paste), which will need to be eaten before you can indulge in the fruit, or terrible things might happen.

Does anyone offer such a real retro tea?

Just to name drop, we had a cream tea (with champagne) after a tour of the gardens at Highgrove recently. They served clotted cream. Whipped cream sounds like a London thing and terribly ersatz.

One phenomenon of the past 50 years is the eastward and northward drift of the cream tea. They used to be confined to Devon and Cornwall, but now every English county seems to have its genuine cream tea. I saw one in Worcestershire last Sunday, as an alternative to lardy cake.

With winkles, you are moving into high tea. We sometimes had them but shrimps were more common. A man would come up the road shouting "Harwich shrimps!" He measured them using a pint mug and he was always followed by a procession of cats

Oh, lardy cake. I haven't had one of those for years. Also, Yorkshire curd tart!

just found this.

in Cornwall you should eat your clotted cream on a "split" with golden syrup; it's called thunder and lightening. there is also the famous Saffron loaf, which features as a "tea treat" which is like a large flat bun, served to children at the annual church afternoon celebration or "feast".

And as well as the famous pasties, my neighbour [along with many others] makes a flat cake/biscuit called "heva" or heavy cake. it's made with lard which is what made me think of it:

http://lobbsfarmshop.wordpress.com/r...nne/heva-cake/

Whipped cream? <i>Whipped</i> cream?? <b>Whipped</b> cream??? That is rank heresy - where is the Inquisition? And just where <b>has</b> the Guardian been eating?

Admitedly, I haven't lived in England in decades, but I grew up there, and I usually have scones (rhymed with cones) and clotted cream at least once every time I visit, and I have never even <b>seen</b> whipped cream with scones, never mind eaten it. Nor would I think of drinking champagne with them, although in my case it would be coffee, not tea.

I do agree with raspberry rather than strawberry, and definitely split the scone horizontally and eat the halves separately, they're not hamburgers.

annhig - haven't heard of thunder and lightning, it sounds a bit too sweet for me.

thursdaysd - i agree about the thunder and lightening - far too sweet for me too.

as for the whipped double cream instead of clotted - not just an aberration but it doesn't work either. if you don't whip it enough it falls off the scone, if you whip it enough to stay put it becomes grainy - just what the author of the article says she doesn't like about clotted cream, which, IMO has exactly the right consistency to stay on the scone [which I agree should be pronounced like "throne" and "bone"].

and definitely served with tea, preferably indian [or ceylon]. Jam first, then cream, and the halves served and eaten separately. delish.

A voice of dissent. I much prefer a good dollop of lightly whipped cream. Clotted cream is just too heavy and cheesy, and makes the tea taste revolting.

"With winkles, you are moving into high tea."

I've never, ever, had "tinned peaches, and maybe mandarin oranges, with evaporated milk" - with or without jelly (though definitely with trifle offered if we were lucky - unless serious savoury food - maybe paste or Heinz Sanwich Spread sandwiches, maybe cold meat, maybe a slice of gala pie - was being served at the same time.

Never with daintified sandwiches, never with a cake stand, never called "afternoon tea", and always served at a meal table.

If eaten at home, called "tea" - though if in a cafe or hotel, the caterer often called it High Tea.

In our family, during the 1950s on the south coast, we always had to eat bread in some way before we were allowed tinned fruit or cake. Wages were lower in the south at that time.

We never routinely used a cake stand, although we probably had one "for best". Many members of the family had been in domestic service in Edwardian times, and such things were passed on to the staff as middle class homes were broken up.

Real cream was hard to get in the 50s, so we had a machine which made cream from milk and unsalted butter.

Gala pie was unknown. Some relatives supplied shop bought cakes, but my mother baked her own in industrial quantities.

shop bought!

When I was growing up the only cooking I was allowed to do was making cakes, mostly sponge cakes. I was very upset when I discovered my recipes didn't work in the US!

>>we always had to eat bread in some way before we were allowed tinned fruit or cake.<<

Or just "bread and butter before bread and jam"

>>Real cream was hard to get in the 50s, so we had a machine which made cream from milk and unsalted butter.<<

So did we. Well, actually, it lived in the cupboard and was looked at from time to time. Hence the evap milk. Or just "top of the milk".

In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

A cup o' cold tea.

Without milk or sugar.

Or tea.

In a cracked cup, an' all.

Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

Oh, I see the prawn sarnie brigade is posting.

We were so poor we could only afford tea in paper cups from Little Chef and would stare longingly at the fancy goods vehicle from Harrods racing off to South Kensington.

Thin

Racing? Have you ever seen a Harrods van on its perambulations?

Well, guv, it is difficult to see when you've lost your spectacles in a chimney sweep accident at Mrs. Jellyby's old manse.

Thin

Gala pie was unknown. Some relatives supplied shop bought cakes, but my mother baked her own in industrial quantities.>>

gala pie? thou were lucky! we 'ad to mek do wi' bread un drippin', an' sumtimes it were just drippin'!

seriously, my mum taught me how to bake a victoria sponge and fruit cake, [skills that I seem to have passed onto my son but not my daughter] but the height of sophistication in our house was the visit to the Leamington Fancy Bakery where my grandfather loved to buy their almond boats, battenburg slices and chocolate box cakes. I can't see a battenburg now without thinking of those Sunday afternoon teas at my grandparents' house. Before the cakes we would have tinned salmon and salad, all washed down with tea of course.

We just called our evening meal "tea". not afternoon tea or high tea, just tea. Dinner was what you ate in the middle of the day. I didn't start eating dinner at night until I was about 25.

About 25, huh? We still have supper at night unless we are going out and I want to impress someone by calling it "out to dinner."

I had high tea (called such) once—at a hotel in Ayrshire. I had tea for the evening meal (with both mince <b>and</b> haggis) in a proper Grampian Scots home on the same trip.

Where I grew up, we took our tea with ice and lots of sugar (and certainly no dairy products therein).

I do like me some scones, though. (And how else would one pronounce them, if not rhyming with <i>cones</i> and <i>bones</i>? Even I know that!)

;)

Some people pronounce scone the same as you you' would gone!

>>The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.<<

A piece of damp cloth? Luxury! We had to lick our tea off the sidewalk.

But we were happy...

Lee Ann

The only dog I have in this fight is an American breed but whipped cream seems like it would make the scone a little too mushy.

Clotted cream is delicious and it holds up well.


Then again, I like tea any way it comes, including airy fairy herbals and yogic teas.

A good strong tea with a cream and a scone is heavenly.

FWIW, I concur that the accompanying cream should be clotted, not whipped, and the accompanying jam should be raspberry, not strawberry.


<i>Some people pronounce scone the same as you would gone!</i>

Smeagol, does that make <i>scone</i> rhyme with <i>prawn</i>? (That's asked in all seriousness—would it be <b>scon</b> or <b>scawn</b>?)

Not at all sure what "clotted cream" is. I know whipped cream. And I have seen - to my horror - the pouring of regular cream (like for coffee) over desserts for some incomprehensible reason.

Is it something like sour cream? If not - how does it get "clotted"?

My mother said scone rhymes with John.


But, it is the Stone of Skoooon.

Thin

No it's not sour cream it's more spreadable and a bit like dry cream cheese. The consistency is in between say, farmer's cheese and feta.

But that doesn't really cover it either. It's really good.

If I ordered a pudding to be accompanied by cream, I'd expect double cream poured over it. I beware menus which specify whipped cream as it's likely to be that true horror, aerated puff out of a can which melts into nothing.

In my world, scone rhymes with con. But it's a perennial debate up and down the land over which is correct.

The crust puts me off clotted cream. Like it's been left too long out of the fridge and just at the point of going off.