English Breakfast. Black tea blend mixed with sugar and milk, to go with bangers and beans. Grilled Tomato would once have been exotic fare from the Americas, after people accepted it as a fruit/vegetable you could eat.
The practice of referring to such a blend as "English breakfast tea" appears to have originated not in England but America, as far back as Colonial times.[2]
-An additional account (referencing a period-era "Journal of Commerce" article) dates the blend to 1843 and a tea merchant named Richard Davies in New York City. Davies, an English immigrant, started with a base of Congou and added a bit of Pekoe and Pouchong. It sold for 50 cents a pound, and its success led to imitators, helping to popularize the name.[3]
-Another account gives its origins in Scotland, where it was initially known simply as "breakfast tea", and was in part popularised by Queen Victoria.[4]
For afternoon and entertaining:
Earl Grey tea has been around since 1830- is laced- "drugged" according to period newspaper-with the oil of the bergamot 'orange' fruit, which apparently helps ameliorate Seasonal Affective Disorder.
According to the Grey family, the tea was specially blended by a Chinese mandarin for Lord Grey, to suit the water at Howick Hall, the family seat in Northumberland, using bergamot in particular to offset the preponderance of lime in the local water. Lady Grey used it to entertain in London as a political hostess, and it proved so popular that she was asked if it could be sold to others, which is how Twinings came to market it as a brand. (wikipedia).
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