A Good Cup of Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Bring the water to a boil in a flat-bottomed kettle.
Heat an earthen teapot by pouring in a little boiling water, then discard it.
Add 1 teaspoon of tea for each cup of water, plus 1 extra for the pot.
Brew
Pour boiling water into the teapot to fill the desired number of cups.
Let the tea steep for 2 minutes, then stir the leaves gently and cover the pot again.
Allow the tea to steep for an additional 3 minutes before serving.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Good tea
- Provides the flavour and aroma that the infusion is built on.
- Freshly drawn, pure and filtered water
- Carries the flavour out of the leaves during steeping.
The step that matters
Steeping the tea. Steeping for too long releases more tannins from the leaves, which makes the tea taste bitter and astringent. Timing the infusion keeps the flavour balanced.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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