Assertion: Earliest "ice-tea" is 1842

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, when I was a student of Russian in 1960 at the old U.S, Army
Language School, now the Defense Language Institute, we were told by
our teachers, all natives of Russia, that a drinker held a sugar cube
or two in his mouth and sipped the tea through the sugar cube(s).

-Wilson Gray

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Victor<aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Victor <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Assertion: Â Earliest "ice-tea" is 1842
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There seems to be a remarkable similarity between the 1842 and 1852
> texts--in fact, close enough to pass for plagiarism today. Of course, it
> is also possible that both are just paraphrasing the same text.
>
> I was initially apprehensive about both of these, as there seems to be
> no clear history for iced tea in Russian cookbooks. However, the 1857
> citations from Saturday Evening Post clinch the deal for me, as they
> clearly identify the brewing method which, in fact, is remarkably
> similar to common Russian way of drinking tea--steeping loose-leaf tea
> to very strong, dark amber color, then diluting it with hot water. It
> usually retains the strong, bitter quality and is flavored with
> substantial amount of sugar and either lemon or milk. All of this
> resembles the SEP description very closely. It would be quite
> interesting to find if the two SEP pieces contributed to the almost
> immediate popularity of iced tea in the South.
>
> Â  Â VS-)
>
> Joel S. Berson wrote:
>> Thanks, Ben. Â Barry's page is certainly exhaustive.
>>
>> But Barry doesn't have the 1842 cite from St. Petersburg (Johann
>> Georg Kohl, _Russia and the Russians, in 1842_, vol. 1, p. 42), which
>> I have found is also at least at:
>> http://englishtea.us/2009/05/05/history-of-iced-tea/
>> from May 5, 2009 (although this does not identify the book or page).
>>
>> I will assert -- for debate and to provoke others to additional
>> search -- that Kohl's is the earliest quotation for "ice-tea" (as a
>> beverage) in English.
>>
>> Joel
>>
>>
>> At 7/16/2009 02:20 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>
>>
>>> There's Barry Popik's page, which has cites back to 1852.
>>>
>>> http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/iced_tea/
>>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org