The Philosophy of Tea-Cakes

THERE is a fine art in choosing the food that shall be served with afternoon tea. Although the true lover of the cup concedes that, no sort of blunder can wholly destroy his exaltation, yet he admits that his joys may be inexpressibly enhanced by a wise discrimination in what is set before him.

Of muffins and tea we have heard much, and who is there to deny the succulent ecstasy thereof? Toast, well buttered and even jammed or marmaladed, has, too, its own unassailable propriety when taken with The Beverage. Of all kindred dishes one needs not much to speak. No voice can justly be raised against them; yet they are of the tea-room, the dining-room, the A.B.C.; not of the drawing-room, where one holds his cup and chats, refills, and chats again.

Anyone who serves wafers with tea is lacking in gastronomic imagination. Drinking tea and eating a wafer is like having a picnic in the wood-shed, or wearing an Easter hat with goloshes. It is a hueless compromise where there might be a vivid delight. Many otherwise excellent hostesses fail to perceive the relation between afternoon tea and its edible accompaniments. They will serve you a hard obstinate biscuit that you break, red-faced, on the rim of your saucer, sending as likely as not, your cup bouncing over the other edge, and your tea splashing into your neighbor’s lap; or they generously provide you with a huge, gelatinous cube of cake that adheres to your saucer, and renders you temporarily web-fingered, the while you attempt, to formulate an epigram on Henry James, or discourse glibly as to why women like men. There is yet another type of hostess who passes with your tea a dribbling sandwich, oozing salad-dressing at every pore and containing, half concealed, a malicious, indivisible lettuce leaf. People who thus fail of maintaining the fitness of things at the tea-hour have no genuine appreciation of the drink which they dispense.

A friend of mine divides the human race into two classes, — those who eat ‘Nabiscos’ with tea, and those who do not. For myself, I see nothing invidious in a liking for the frail, tasteless little slabs; they are neat and innocent to the eye, they leave no sticky crumbs, and they create no havoc with white kid gloves. If they are a trifle lacking in distinction, why, so are no end of estimable arlicles and persons in the world. I should, however, be inclined to place more stress upon a taste for caraway cookies. To me, a caraway cooky is a delectable tid-bit, losing nothing if eaten by itself, but gaining incalculably if nibbled with afternoon tea. Those who do not regard it with joy puzzle me a little, I confess. In what spirit, I ask sadly, do they look upon existence, if a caraway cooky fails to stimulate within them a pious gratitude for the privilege of living?

Some of the Chinese dainties are not bad — but that is the best that an Occidental can say of them. The flat rice-cookies derive their interest from the temples and grottoes and running streams cameoed palely upon their discs. One eats them gingerly, conscious of the fact that he is sweeping away a country-side at a bite, and demolishing a whole landscape at one crunch of the teeth. They are, after all, ephemeral insipidities, quite incapable of pleasing the palate, though they may afford a moment’s languid pleasure to the eye. There are, too, the Chinese cakes that come in blocks, like a quart of brick ice-cream, and peel off in layers, after the manner of a writing tablet; a red swastika appears smugly in the centre of every slice, guaranteeing good luck in the eating and no undue qualms afterward. These dainties are anæmic confections enough, that tease the tongue and distract the mind, but make not for that beatific blending of sense and spirit which is the consummate prerogative of afternoon tea.

The discerning tea-drinker finds nothing, perhaps, more appropriate to his mood than some variety of the old-fashioned pound cake. It has a delicate persuasiveness of its own when it appears upon the drawing-room horizon — smooth, golden, firm yet melting, topped with a deep brown crust, and scattered through with red sultanas or translucent parings of citron. Pound-cake in slices not too thick, piled upon a jade-colored Sedgi plate or one of blue-and-white Canton is a little hill of gold ingots, more seductive than Spanish bullion because less evanescent in its blessings. Still more satisfying to the demands of the occasion is the light sponge-cake baked with a rose geranium leaf in the bottom of the tin, — enchanting stuff, exhaling an aroma that puts it with the foods of high romance — not the dull substantial of every-day existence. And who would ask for substantiate at afternoon tea? It is not a meal but a rite, founded in the hallowed past by — if not the Fathers, then one may justly say the Mothers, and preserved by an unbroken apostolic succession of devotees. We dare not say that the food of the flesh in the hour of sacrifice is beneath the nicest consideration. Surely the Greek thought not when he brought forward to the altar his cakes of poppyseed and honey.

It is fitting, then, that one select with judicious finger the viands that one spreads before her guests when the tea-cup circulates at the dropping of twilight. There should be no too, too solid, over-unctuous, or deadly commonplace comestibles to destroy the perfect harmony of meat and drink. For with perfect harmony the gods arc pleased, and thus in their beneficence they slip a gracious charm into all the recurring monotonies of human life.