"Irish Blend" tea is designed to give one strength to ward of the cold.
It is strong medicine. One needs to make sure that it steeps for at lest
five minutes and that you use about 1/3 good real cream. Put cream and
sugar in first...Here is an interesting account....it must have been
strong indeed at times!
Nearly twenty times as much tea must be drunk now in
Kerry as in the early sixties, and so far as I can recollect tea
was unknown, not only in the cabins but among the farmers
until after the famine. Fairly good tea is obtained, for the Irish will never buy
tea unless they are asked a high price, and for that price
they usually, owing to competition, obtain an article not too
perniciously adulterated. What is highly injurious is the method of making
the tea. A lot is thrown into the pot on the fire in the cabin in
the morning, and there it stands simmering all day long, that
those who want it may help themselves. This is in sharp contrast to the method employed by
Dr. Barter, the famous hydropathic physician at Cork, one
of the cleverest men I ever met and one of the very few
who never permitted medicine under any circumstances, relying
on water, packing, and Turkish baths, with strict attention
to diet. He used to make tea by putting half a teaspoonful into
a wire strainer which he held over his cup, and pouring
boiling water upon the leaves, the contents of his cup became
a pale yellow, to which he added a little milk and
instantly drank it off, the whole process lasting but a few
seconds. I remember he equally disapproved of the Russian
method of drinking tea in a glass with lemon, of the fashionable
way of letting the water ' stand off the boil' upon the
leaves in a teapot, and of the Hibernian stewing arrangement
alluded to above.
-From: The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent., Samuel Murray Hussey, 1904
