A Christmas Carol Afternoon Tea

A sketch

Dec 21, 2023

One of the things I wanted to do with this substack was to play a bit with ideas, and maybe some creative writing. After having written regular posts for a while now (since June, to be exact), I realise that I haven’t really done that. To be fair, as I was travelling a lot, I always had to write something about that, but I think this might be a missed opportunity. So I switched the post I had planned for today with trying something a bit different today. Let me know in the comments how you like it.

(And I will post what I had planned for today next time, because that one doesn’t really have a seasonal connection. Plus it isn’t finished yet.)

If you’ve been a reader of this substack for a while, you’ll know that I love an afternoon tea - and specifically I love a themed afternoon tea. If you haven’t been a regular reader, make sure you’ll never miss a post again by subscribing - and you can also check out the archive!

Yesterday, I went to my last afternoon tea of the year, and it was sort of billed as a ‘festive’ afternoon tea, but while it was very nice, it wasn’t really that geared towards the festive season that you would have known.

So my idea, just for the fun of it, and for your consideration:

An Afternoon Tea inspired by A Christmas Carol

(Disclaimer: I don’t think I have ever actually read A Christmas Carol, which obviously I would do if this was a real project. I have, however, seen enough adaptations to have a sense of what it is about and what happens. My top three: Scrooged, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and - late entry from this year - Spirited, in which the afterlife is a musical, I mean what’s not to love? I’m just sayin, if you are A Christmas Carol aficionado, please forgive any inconsistencies.)

I don’t have a specific venue in mind for this, but something with a Victorian feel would probably be good.

I spotted this tea pot at the Museum of Tea Culture in Macao - its wrapped design makes me think of ghosts - tea pots like this might be great for this afternoon tea!

Marley

The ghost of Marley is sort of the herald of the piece, so for my afternoon tea, this would be the announcement phase, or maybe an amuse bouche. I like the idea of somehow referencing the chains, but haven’t been able to come up with a food that does this. So maybe this could be a welcoming cocktail - I think the double meaning of spirit as in both ghost and alcohol would work well here for giving it a name that makes the link to Marley. It could use chains as decoration somehow, or something referencing his love of money. Chocolate coins, maybe?

We would also have a non-alcoholic alternative.

Alternatively (or in addition to), the menu could be presented as a paper chain - one dish per link, different colours for the different courses -, referencing both Marley and Christmas.

Ghost of Christmas Past

The first course, i.e. the savouries, is made up of dishes that are hearty and slightly old fashioned, evoking the past. Correspondingly there would be old-fashioned crockery and cutlery. We could have

roast beef and horseradish in mini Yorkshire puddings
hog roast mini roll with apple sauce
black pudding scotch egg
pigs in blankets
goose and cranberry sausage roll
chestnut and Brussels sprouts mini tart
mini cup of parsnip soup
Portobello mushroom stuffed with sweet potato and goats cheese
Cabbage tart

Ghost of Christmas Present

The scone course plays with the double meaning of ‘present’ as both time-related and as meaning a gift. The scones would not be round, but rectangular, presented with ribbons around them and bows on top. Similarly clotted cream and jam would be in little gift boxes - all contained in a larger gift box that is presented at the table. With that comes contemporary crockery and cutlery (I’m a big fan of fresh plates for each course of an afternoon tea).

Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

Since this ghost is the most depressing one, let’s be inspired by the future for this course, the sweets. I think this would be great opportunity to present both bold colours, shapes, but also different ways of consuming food, i.e. inspired by astronaut food - sachets, pills, tubes, etc.

red and green jelly tower (maybe cranberry and rosemary flavoured), stacked so that it is leaning
essence of fruit cake pills
Yule log in a tube
Christmas pudding delivered in different sachets, so that you need to combine them in your mouth for the flavour experience
popping candy

The End of It

We give our guests the option to leave a donation for a good cause when paying the bill (or if we charged in advance we inform them that part of the bill has been donated to charity), and leave them with a few Humbugs for the way home.

What do you think? Would you want to attend this afternoon tea? Any ideas on how to improve it? And would you want more of these ideas on the substack?

Let me know in the comments!