Dumb question...difference between 'high tea' and 'tea'? Brown's Hotel question too!
Jul 13th, 2001, 08:46 AM
#21
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a note to earth mama - if you come to the states and order "tea" - you will get iced tea - and if you are in the south you will get iced tea with about a half pound of sugar added. So Americans order "hot tea" so they don't get the iced variety - not because they think it will be served tepid.
Aug 9th, 2001, 03:16 PM
#30
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These distinctions come from another time (pre WWII when most middle class families had servants). In my mother's day (1920s+ and among my older relations when I visited in the 1950s), upper middle class families had tea (bread, butter, jam, biscuits--plain and chocolate--and sometimes cake) at 4 and dinner (main meal) at 8. As a thoroughly North American child I was horrified on visiting some of my father's grander relations to find that children had a somewhat bigger tea (boiled eggs and cereal in addition to the above) and didn't eat with the grownups except on special occasions. Though I think that by that time the nursery rule of "butter or jam on your bread, but not both) had disappeared. <BR> <BR>In working class, particularly rural families, the main meal was at noon (dinner) and tea was a fairly substantial evening meal. <BR> <BR>High tea is a bit harder to define, but was often tea that included some elements of a main meal and was eaten on the cooks' day off or when the family was on holiday.
