History of cream teas
Each of the counties of the West Country of Southern England has their cream tea: the Cornish cream tea, the Devonshire cream tea, the Somerset cream tea and the Dorset cream tea. There are claims from each of these counties asserting their right to the title of the “original cream tea”.
Very conveniently in time for the Tavistock Food and Drink Festival, the BBC reported that local historians in Tavistock, West Devon, supposedly came across ancient manuscripts from the 11th century that showed that the monks of the local Benedictine Abbey created the dish. The story goes that Abbey had been plundered by Vikings in 997 AD, and the resident Benedictine monks fed bread, clotted cream and strawberry preserves to the local workers restoring the Abbey. Every other statement crediting Devon with the original cream tea refers back to that single BBC report.
While the manuscript from the Tavistock Abbey may be one of the earliest written references to the cream tea, the neighbouring county of Cornwall makes its claim for being the origin of clotted cream. In 500 BC, Phoenicians (from what is now modern day Lebanon and Syria) sailed to the South West of England in search of Cornish tin, and may have traded their art of cream making with the locals; at least, so theorised the food historian Alan Davidson. A similar product to clotted cream is still produced today in Lebanon and Afghanistan, called kaymak, but there can be no doubt that if this was the recipe that was brought to Cornwall by the Phoenicians, the Cornish took it and made it their own.
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Less apocryphal references place the earliest mention of clotted cream in the 1500′s. The poet Edmund Spenser wrote about ‘clouted cream’ in his work ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar’ in 1579, although it was surely found in many a West Country kitchen before this date.
Today, cream teas can be found throughout England, and indeed all over the world. Whatever the county credited, the combination of clotted cream, scones and preserve continue to evoke the taste and traditions of the West Country.