How to make good tea

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If the tea is desired to be of good flavour, be careful not to make it in a teapot which has been long out of use without having previously washed it out with boiling water. This is done to remove any slight mouldiness which might be present in the vessel without being observed, and which would impart a disagreeable taste to the tea when made.

Always keep the tea in a proper canister, protected from the atmosphere and from damp, otherwise it will lose the pleasant scent peculiar to good tea, and when used, give the beverate an unpleasant flavour. For this reason be very careful, if possible, never to purchase tea which hsa a musty odour, even in the slightest degree, or which does not possess that agreeable scent so characteristic of tea in good condition, but which is so quickly lost by exposure to damp.

In making tea always fill up the teapot at once. By this means the whole of the theine - which is the vegetable principle on which the peculiar effects produced by tea depends - is extracted at once. This will be found much superior to the plan sometimes adopted of first wetting the tea with a small quantity of hot water, and then allowing it to stand before filling up the teapot. For the purpose of extracting the whole of the theine, the water should be allowed to remain in the tea for at least ten minutes before pouring it out.

Be also very careful that the water employed for making tea is boiling before filling the teapot, otherwise the whole of the theine will not be extracted by the fluid, and the tea employed will not go so far as it otherwise would.