| There is some considerable precedent for it though. This was an age when many things at average and cheaper prices were adulterated. There were assorted ways of reusing tea and coffee by adding spices and chemicals to once used remains, not just the example discussed. Even expensive was no guarantee of purity as few could tell when something had been adulterated, or often what pure and fresh was meant to taste like. Things aged and changed taste considerably in the weeks or months on ship - there's a few coffees and teas that still try and simulate this effect - Monsooned Malabar is one well known one. Bread used to contain alum, chalk and other things to bulk and colour it. So did sugar, flour, pepper, well, you name it. Adulteration remained endemic, both sides of the Atlantic until food legislation and associated testing started to arrive in the later 19th century. Yet tea drinking - almost exclusively black tea from India when it arrived in quantity - which became a huge part of Indian trade, took off. At the better end this developed into a culture was more than had existed in India or China. Emphatically not better, more and different - it was a combination of British and tea drinking from China or India. Rather like Chicken Tikka has almost become the staple British dish - that is a combination of British and Indian today. Like the cliche obsession with making the perfect espresso today, a couple of decades ago every Brit had an opinion on how to make a decent cup of tea. Clearly this has to start with ignoring tea bags entirely, or you will get what you deserve. :) I will very quietly note that getting a decent cup of tea in any of my US visits proved possible, but damn it was hard work. :) |