Tea in the United Kingdom

Since the 17th century, the United Kingdom has been one of the world's largest tea consumers, with an average annual per capita supply of 1.9 kilograms (4.2 lb).

He argues that tea only became popular once sugar was added to the drink and that the combination became associated with a domestic ritual that indicated respectability.

[14] Purchas described how the Chinese consumed tea as "the powder of a certaine herbe called chia of which they put as much as a walnut shell may contain, into a dish of Porcelane, and drink it with hot water".

[14] In 1637, Peter Mundy, a traveller and merchant who came across tea in Fujian, China, wrote, "chaa – only water with a kind of herb boyled in it".

[16] Thomas Garway, a tobacconist and coffee house owner, was the first person in England to sell tea as a leaf and beverage at his London coffeehouse in Exchange Alley in 1657.

[19] The announcement proclaimed, "That Excellent, and by all Physicians approved, China drink, called by the Chinese, Tcha, by other nations Tay alias Tee, ...sold at the Sultaness-head, ye Cophee-house in Sweetings-Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London".

[20][19] In London, "[c]offee, chocolate and a kind of drink called tee" were "sold in almost every street in 1659", according to Thomas Rugge's Diurnall.

[25] Dirx went into considerable detail on the specific merits of tea, such as curing "headaches, colds, ophthalmia, catarrh, asthma, sluggishness of the stomach, and intestinal troubles".

Garway claims that "the Drink is declared to be most wholesome, preserving in perfect health until extreme Old Age", as well as "maketh the body active and lusty", "helpeth the Headache", "taketh away the difficulty of breathing", "strengtheneth the Memory", and "expelleth infection".

[30] In 1667, Pepys noted that his wife was taking tea on medical advice – "a drink which Mr Pelling the Pottecary tells her is good for her colds and defluxions".

English philosopher John Locke developed a fondness for tea after spending time with Dutch medical men in the 1680s.

[31] These men are the "virtuosi" referred to by Ellis, Coulton, and Mauger: scientists, philosophers, and doctors who first took an interest in tea and contributed to its early popularity as a pharmaceutical.

[33] According to Ellis, Coulton, and Mauger, "tea was six to ten times more expensive than coffee" in the 1660s, making it a costly and luxurious commodity.

In 1660, 2 pounds (0.91 kg) and 2 ounces (57 g) of tea bought from Portugal were formally presented to Charles II of England by the East India Company.

She introduced it at Domus Dei in Portsmouth[36] during her wedding to Charles II in 1662 and made it fashionable among the ladies of the court as her temperance drink of choice.

The addition of sugar was yet another factor that made tea desirable among the elite crowd, as it was another luxurious commodity already well-established among the upper classes.

[41] In between tea's earliest mentions in Britain and its widespread popularity just over a century later, many factors contributed to the craze for this previously unknown foreign commodity.

[42] By 1766, exports from Canton stood at 6,000,000 pounds (2,700,000 kg) on British boats, compared with 4.5 on Dutch ships, 2.4 on Swedish, 2.1 on French.

[44] Whatever the drink's supposed benefits, Francisca A. Antman has argued that the expansion of tea-drinking in eighteenth-century Britain meant that people were consuming more boiled water, which was less likely to carry pathogens, and that this explains a previously puzzling fall in mortality from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.

It was not until after 1700 that the East India Company began to trade regularly with China and ordered tea for export, though not in large quantities.

When the popular English patriotic ballad "The Roast Beef of Old England" was written in 1731, it portrayed tea (as well as coffee) as foreign and un-English, noting that they were rare during the time of Elizabeth I.

[58] Because tea began in Britain as a luxury for the upper classes, it had a reputation in the 18th century as a high-class commodity; however, as prices slowly fell, more people at the middle levels of society had access to it.

Drinking a hot, sweet beverage helped the meals of the lower classes, which generally consisted of dry bread and cheese, go down more easily.

[78] Whether to put the tea in the cup first and add the milk after or do the opposite has split public opinion, with Orwell stating, "indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject".

While adding milk first will cause an initial drop in temperature, which leads to a more shallow cooling curve and slower cooling while also increasing volume (which would slightly increase the surface area through which the tea could lose heat), one study[citation needed] noted that adding milk first leads to the tea retaining heat out of all proportion with these effects.

The major mechanism by which hot tea cools is not conduction or radiation, but evaporative loss, which is affected by the physical properties of the milk.

[84] If one is seated at a table, the proper manner to drink tea is to raise the teacup only, placing it back into the saucer in between sips.

One response to the perception of widespread dissolution was the temperance movement, which promoted tea as a healthful alternative to alcohol of any sort.

Tea rooms were also significant since they provided a place where women in the Victorian era could take a meal without a male escort, without risk to their reputations.

[87] Paul Chrystal characterises tea rooms as "popular and fashionable, especially with women", providing them with a dignified and safe place to meet, eat, and strategise on political campaigns.