The Hotels’ Teapage

( words)

Who Serves What

(a growing blog of global tea time)

LONDON RITZ

Sandwiches
Cucumber and dill
Smoked salmon with lemon butter
Egg mayonnaise with mustard cress
Poached turkey and mayonnaise
Cream cheese and mustard grain
Roast ham
Poached salmon and watercress
Roast beef and horseradish

Freshly baked scones
With home made strawberry jam and clotted cream

Afternoon Tea Pastries and Fresh Cream Cakes

Ritz Selected Teas or Coffee

Tea and Coffee

King Gustaf III of Sweden  (Stockholm, 1746 – 1792), known for instituting the Swedish Academy, had his own way to find out if drinking coffee is bad for one's health. In the 18th century a pair of mono-zygotic twins had been sentenced to death for murder. Gustaf III commuted their death sentences to life imprisonment on the condition that one twin drank a large bowl of tea three times a day and that the other twin drank coffee. The twin who drank tea died first, aged 83 – a remarkable age for the time. Thus the case was settled: coffee was the less dangerous of the two beverages. The king, on the other hand, was murdered at a masked ball in 1792 at the age of 45 and became the subject of an opera by Verdi (Un ballo in maschera, 1859).