The LaForge Tea Party

[hrj]

It was a lovely intimate little tea party, with acanthusleaf, ldyanna, and joycebre in attendence:



The basic idea was to put together a light afternoon tea that was appropriate for the 1870s (the original date of the tea set) and if possible included foods mentioned in great-great-grandpa Abiel's diaries. The diary angle was tough (although I always enjoy getting sucked into reading it) because he didn't tend to write about food in detail. There were a couple of mentions about going out for "tea and cream cakes", a reference to eating strawberries and cream, and endless references to getting shipments of maple syrup and maple sugar from the family farm. (The most detailed meal description I found was from when he was on a buying trip in Europe and described a fancy dinner in France thus: "Dinner was served with full ceremony, in courses, soup & fish with claret, fowl and meat with Bordeau, sweets, bonbons and fruit with Honey wine; … ladies took café noir with us in the smoking room … the ladies left and cordials and brandy were served to the gentlemen.")

I started poking around in Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School cookbook (a bit later than my target date) and Mrs. Beeton's cookbook (right date, but English rather than American). And then when I went searching on-line, I turned up a site I'd found previously that had a facsimile and transcript of a book entitled " Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea" by Marion Harland, dated 1875, which included a loving description of a "Boston tea" that looked like exactly the sort of meal I was looking for. Ok, so Abiel was a New Yorker, not a Bostonian, but he spent some time as a traveling salesman, so I'm willing to grant him a bit of latitude, and this was the first detailed menu I'd found.

I was almost grown before I was introduced to what the valued correspondent who gave us the text for the first "Familiar Talk " in this volume calls, "a real old New England tea-table." During one delicious vacation I learned, and reveled in knowing, what this meant. Black tea with cream, (I have never relished it without, since that idyllic summer) rounds of brown bread, light, sweet, and fresh; hot short-cake in piles that were very high when we sat down, and very low when we arose; a big glass bowl of raspberries and currants that were growing in the garden under the back windows an hour before; a basket of frosted cake; a plate of pink ham, balanced by one of shaved, not chipped beef-and sage cheese! I had never eaten it before. I have never tasted it anywhere else than in that wide, cool tea-room, the level sun-rays flickering through the grape-vines shading the west side of the house, and through the open casements opposite, a view of Boston bay--all purple and rose and gold, dotted with hundreds of white sails. This was what we had, when, in that Old New England farm-house.

I wasn't inclined to copy the menu exactly, but it gave me a few ideas. Between Harland and Farmer, I found two completely different recipes labeled "cream cakes" – one a cream puff with a lemon flavored filling, and one a pastry shell filled with cream and jelly. Might as well do both! But I blended the latter with Farmer's recipe for "strawberry baskets" (a timbale filled with berries and cream), since it fit nicely with Harland's emphasis on fresh berries, and Abiel's reference to berries and cream. (Alas, although local strawberries are starting to show up in the market, the ones I found all looked anemic and watery, so I stuck to raspberries & blueberries.)

Several sources mentioned tea sandwiches, and Farmer has a large variety of filling recipes, so I picked a selection (including ham, in homage to Harland's reference) and did two fillings on Boston brown bread (commercial, alas, but one has to be practical) and two on white bread. I dithered over how to serve the sage cheese and ended up deciding on open-face sandwiches on the brown bread.

Someone (I've lost track of who in my notes) also lists nuts, glace fruits, and bonbons. I had some sugared almonds left over from another event but decided to skip the glace fruits since I wasn't finding any in the stores and didn't want to try to fit them in from scratch. I wanted to have some sort of maple-flavored bonbons, since maple products from the family farm were a major theme of Abiel's diaries, and I tried to find some plain maple sugar candies, but practicality again won through and I picked up a couple types of maple cream bonbons from See's at the local mall.

So here's the final menu:



Tea: Thé Rouge Bourbon & Ceylan O.P. Ratnapura, both from Mariage Frères; with milk and fancy shaped sugar cubes



Sandwiches



Sliced ham between buttered slices of Boston brown bread

Equal parts grated Gruyere cheese and ground walnuts, seasoned with cayenne pepper, between buttered slices of Boston brown bread

Slices of sage cheese (sage-flavored Vermont cheddar), open-faced on buttered Boston brown bread, cut into shapes

Egg salad (minced egg, seasoned with salt and pepper, moistened with mayonnaise), spread on a lettuce leaf, between slices of white bread

Minced crab (substituted for the lobster in the original recipe), seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, and mustard, moistened with lemon juice, spread on a lettuce leaf, between slices of white bread

Cream Cakes



Small round cream puffs (1/2 c. water, 1/8 c. butter, 1/2 c. flour, 2 eggs; follow your standard cream puff recipe); filled with a commercial vanilla pudding mix with a splash of lemon extract and fresh lemon zest added

Squares of commercial puff pastry (ca. 2" square) brushed with egg white and sprinkled with sugar, baked in a muffin pan. When they come out of the oven, use a blunt object (like the end of a knife handle) to make an indentation in the center. Just before serving, fill with a dab of Devonshire cream and a spoonful of fresh mixed raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries.

Misc.

Layer fresh berries and cream in individual glass cordial cups.
Sugared almonds.
Maple bonbons.

Comments

[vittoriosa.livejournal.com]

P.S. Where did you get your Mariage Freres? I know of only a couple shops in the Bay Area that carry it...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

A little place on 4th St in Berkeley -- I think it's simply called "Pasta Shop" or something. Right across the street from Sur La Table. They've got over a dozen different varieties -- did you need some?

[vittoriosa.livejournal.com]

I don't need anything specifically, I'm just always on the lookout for where to find it locally. I will be sure to check that place out next time I'm in the neighborhood.