High tea

FannyCornforth

GrannyLaine

MawBe... is it you?? Are you back??

She is!
Isn't it marvellous!

?????????

Oh! Hello, Maw!

The main place I used to buy food from in Nigeria always had fresh tongues on display. My dd was endlessly fascinated by them, face pressed up against the glass display to peer at them. They came in all sorts of colours and had weird hairs on them. ?

It was only after food rationing ended I experienced ' high tea'.Tinned salmon sandwiches followed by tinned fruit and tinned cream..

No need to apologise GrannyLaine

I wonder whether anyone who is on Twitter or Facebook could send Esther Walker a link to this thread.

I can't believe she's actually been paid for writing such rubbish. Has she ever met a "Boomer" Granny?

Afternoon tea has been tried and tested in many places on my travels and delicious they all were too, can't decide if it was the Raffles years ago or the Anassa in Cyprus. Though at the Anassa it was with friends and that would be the winner.

FannyCornforth

GrannyLaine

MawBe... is it you?? Are you back??

She is!
Isn't it marvellous!

Thanks Fanny
Hurrah!!!!
It's made my day.

And please, Varian, forgive my rudeness. Completely agree with your OP: Afternoon Tea and High Tea are very different animals. And I love both!

I have distant memories of high tea with my grandmother and sometimes when we were on holiday. Usually ham and salad, with hard boiled eggs and salad cream. If my mother was involved there would probably be sticks of celery (which I loathed) Naturally there would be bread and butter that had to be eaten before we could have cake. If there was jam it would be in a pot and you had to take a spoonful of it and put it on the side of your plate rather than on the bread. Did other people do this?

Totally agree with all those who say that high tea is different from afternoon tea. When my children were small we went to SW Scotland for holidays, high tea was a really useful meal, you could feed them early, bath, bed and parents could relax with a glass or two! Delighted to see Maw back!

We had afternoon tea in The Empress Hotel, Victoria, BC, Canada to celebrate an Aunt’s birthday, it was very special.

Many years ago I went to Scotland on holiday with my parents staying at b&b. Our first evening we found a lovely restaurant and had a super meal. On returning to the b&b about 8 pm we were served with a huge trolley of food. I can’t remember what now, I think it was sandwiches, cakes and scones all looking really lovely. Fortunately dad was a trencherman and able to eat more than his fair share which avoided embarrassment.

We had not realised they had high tea in Scotland. Any preconceived notions of mean Scots were instantly dismissed. They could not have been more generous and welcoming. Just wished we had known before

GrannyLaine

*MawBe*... is it you?? Are you back??

She is!
Isn't it marvellous!

Several mentions of tongue brings me back to childhood in my paternal grandmother’s house. She always had ox tongue for her visitors. She pressed it between 2 plates for several days with the heavy iron on top for weight. I can remember gazing at the monstrosity peaking out from between the plates and hoping I wouldn’t be asked to eat any of it ?

Looking back now, if it had been called by another name other than tongue I probably wouldn’t have had a second thought about its origins.

My granny always used to say, "We'll have high tea off a low table." I have no idea why as it never seemed to have any connection to high tea.

MawBe... is it you?? Are you back??

Totally agree with your OP, Varian. High tea was one of the delights I discovered when I moved to Scotland in the 70’s. For me, high tea has to involve bread and butter, even if you don’t eat it. It’s a fabulous meal when you have young children, you get them fed in time to put them to bed and you’ve also had your evening meal, so you can then spend the rest of evening doing what you want, instead of cooking.

As for suet - my mother would never have it in the house! The only place that served suet was at school dinners, in the 60’s, and I didn’t like it. My mum was really quite modern with her meals. I remember her coming home clutching a very long blue packet which contained Italian spaghetti! She’s 93yo now and still trying out new recipes.

Money was tight when I was growing up in Scotland in the '50s and occasionally we would go out for high tea and yes, it was a main hot meal usually followed with cakes etc and served with tea. This was usually around 5 pm.

Esther Walker goes on -

"Seeing grandparents again-Never underestimate how much Boomers appreciate comforting cooking such as pies and puddings made with suet. If you want to cut corners, Asda’s Extra Special Madagascan Vanilla Custard is the best on the high street. In a way, this old-school fare is a blessed relief from cooking in a modern Ottolenghi-style ."

I think Esther Walker is mixing us up with our grandparents.

The very though of suet is disgusting, especially to Grannies like me who don't eat meat. You can call it "old school cooking" because it is the sort of food we had to put up with when we had school dinners in the 1950s.

High Tea---as mum skittingly used to say, " on the roof ".

Well I know it’s neither afternoon tea time nor is it high tea time but I’m sitting here enjoying a very tasty tongue and Branson pickle sandwich - made with an equally tasty tiger bread bun and lashings of butter!
Totally amazed at all the scathing comments about tongue.
? ? ?

When taken in a fancy hotel restaurant/cafe, afternoon tea is usually finger sandwiches followed by scones jam and cream with fancy cakes all on a cake stand with tea of ones choice. Always cold and sweet.

High tea is all of the above plus something hot and savoury. I didn’t know the difference until I was lucky enough to be treated fir a special birthday to High Tea at the Savoy just prior to lockdown no.1. Couldn’t finish it all and we were provided with a very fancy box carefully packed with the cakes we couldn't manage which we ate for the rest of the week.

Tea at home is either a cuppa or a meal in the evening. I have never understood what supper is.

High tea in South Yorkshire has always been a main meal eaten in the evening when folks come home from work. It is usually just referred to as “tea”, as in “is me tea ready? I could eat a scabby ‘orse!” A hot meal with sometimes a pudding, or cake. Lunch was usually soup and/or a sandwich. Supper was whatever you could find! Salad was only served on Sunday for Sunday tea which followed a full roast dinner midday-ish.

I agree, high tea was a substantial meal in our house, usually the dreaded tongue or ham salad with bread and butter. Tinned fruit with evap as someone else said then a choice of cakes.
Afternoon tea is a much lighter affair with small crustless sandwiches, scones with jam and cream and small cakes. A very enjoyable experience. My husband and I have put these on as fund raisers and find that French people love the idea.

I think that families with young children tend to call the evening meal "tea". If the children are small and go to bed early they might have their tea before the parents have their evening meal but when children and parents eat together it is generally called tea and would always involve a main course.

I get the impression that this is true all over the country, noy just in Scotland and the North of England.

High tea was definitely far more substantial affair than afternoon tea. I recall when I was young, afternoon tea was taken between four and five pm on the lines of cucumber sandwiches, scones +, Victoria sponge etc. Lunch was served at 1pm. High tea, if it appeared was something cooked, usually served with a pudding, nearer five or six pm, if, for some reason a hot lunch had not been available. Supper was a later affair usually about nine-ish. Dinner was served if you had visitors and was far more elaborate! I wonder whether the more Northern trend of calling the main meal of the day ‘tea’ derives from this.

Esther Walker goes on to suggest - "Of course, if you are still in the zero-effort stage of your post-Covid social recovery, you can get away with a pile of cucumber sandwiches and nine boxes of Mr Kipling’s fondant fancies decanted onto plates. "

inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/new-rules-for-hosting-indoors-1000089

I think we're all agreed that would never amount to high tea!