What Do You Dunk in Your Tea? Trivia Quiz

Answer: COOKIES

Cookies describe any flat baked pastry product. They are generally small, crispy and made from flour, eggs and sugar. The word "cookie" is an American derivation of the Dutch word "koekje" or little cake. The dunking of a cookie into a cup of hot tea softens the pastry, imparting some of the flavor of the tea into the cookie. Almost any cookie can be used with tea; however, a personal favorite of mine is to take a common almond cookie sold in US Chinese style restaurants and soak the cookie in an oolong/jasmine green tea.

Answer: SUGAR

Common table sugar is refined from either the sugar beet or the sugarcane plants. Both beets and sugarcane produce a white sugar and a brown extract called molasses. Molasses is a slightly sweet syrup that is often used in baked goods. Brown sugar is a refinement of a beet or cane that leaves some of the molasses connected to the white sugar. Sugar was primarily used in Asian countries during ancient periods. Sugar, like most Middle and Far East goods, made its way to Europe from Arab traders and as spoils of war from the Crusades.

By the 14th century, European sugar refining began in earnest. Columbus brought sugarcane plantings with him from the Canary Islands that became the basis for the vast sugarcane crops now found in the Americas.

Answer: DONUTS

Donuts or any of the universe of fried, sweetened dough pastry products almost require a dip into a cup of tea before consuming. While disputed, the pastry was likely developed in the US by Dutch immigrant bakers in the early 19th century. They created a version of the Dutch fried dough ball or "oliekoek". By the mid-19th century, the dough balls looked like the standard American donut -- round with a hole in the middle. Early 20th century marketing simplified the foreign-sounding "doughnut" to a more "Americanized" spelling of "donut".

Whatever you call the fried pastry it goes well with a cup of tea. The sweetness of the porous dough seeps in the tea's flavors creating a warm, soft cake-like pastry.

Answer: SILVER SPOON

A common English expression used to indicate that a person is wealthy is to note "they were born with a silver spoon". The phrase originates from the fact that prior to the 18th century, most homes did not stock a set of utensils for guests to use during a meal. Each person was expected to carry their own spoon and provide their own knife. Carrying a spoon made from silver indicated a higher economic status and was a badge of honor.

The use of silver for food service utensils has benefits above social status. Silver has anti-microbial properties that act to provide a measure of disinfection for the spoon. So, to be on the safe side feel free to carry a spare silver spoon to stir your tea.

Answer: ICE CUBES

The first artificial ice cubes were developed by American John Gorrie in 1844, as part of the development of the refrigerator. At the start, neither the cool box nor the ice cubes made inside were intended to reduce the temperature of food and beverages. Rather, the unit was intended to lower a room's ambient air temperature as an aid to good health. The modern rubber tray of ice cubes was developed in the late 1920s by another American inventor, Lloyd Groff Copeman.

The ice cube as a method to cool tea (and other liquids) is slowly going out of fashion. While there is no argument that using ice cubes reduces the temperature of the liquid, they also dilute the flavor of the tea. Non-water and reusable ice cubes are becoming increasingly popular.

Answer: Biscuits

Are biscuits a baked, flat pastry (cookie) or is a biscuit a baked bread product normally smothered in gravy (scone)? This is a debate that threatens to rekindle the war between the English and its former American colonies. In the US, a biscuit is a quick bread often made from sourdough flour that can be used in the same manner as a roll. In Commonwealth nations and much of Europe, biscuits are flat baked products that may be savory and are thus similar to a US cracker or when sweet the same as a cookie.

No matter what you mean by a biscuit, a quick dunk in a fine cup of tea is always an added treat.

Answer: CINNAMON

Cinnamon is a spice that is made from the inner bark of several varieties of trees from the genus Cinnamomum of the laurel tree family. The bark is either ground into a powder or used as a stick to add a spicy, sweet flavor to tea, pastry, bread and any number of sweet and savory foods. The cinnamon bearing trees grow in tropical and semi-tropical regions across the globe, but many experts place particular value on groves in Sri Lanka and China.

My favorite variety of tea is the spicy chai tea that originates in India. While blends of chai tea vary considerably, the most common recipes combine black tea with cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, cloves, ginger and black peppercorns.

Answer: HONEY

The cultivation of bees and the use of honey dates back at least 7500 years. Ancient cultures in Europe, Asia and the Americas all evidence use of honey as a sweetener and cooking ingredient. Honey is a natural unprocessed food product collected from the hives of certain bee species.

The bees ingest the nectar of flowering plants and regurgitate the honey for use by the hive. The highly sweet, glucose and fructose, honey is stored in a comb structure within the hive. Honey can vary in flavor depending on the type of plants from which the bees obtained the nectar.

Answer: MILK OR CREAM

Before the chai tea and latte revolution reached the shores of the New World in the late 20th Century, there was a debate between England and the US almost as furious as the cookie versus biscuit brouhaha. The issue was whether milk and/or cream belonged in tea. Most Americans felt that maybe a lemon could be added to the tea, but milk and cream were proper only in coffee. For the average American, adding milk to tea was either a mistake or the work of an addled mind.

In the 21st century, the vast majority of the over 55 billion cups of tea consumed in the US remains milk free, but the culture has grown to accept milk teas without the drinker's sanity being questioned.

Answer: ASPARTAME

Aspartame is the common trade name for the artificial sweetener substitute synthesized in the US in 1965. Aspartame has no calories and joined a long line of scientific attempts to provide a cup of sweetened tea without adding the calories of honey or sugar. Aspartame was first sold commercially in the early 1980s under the brand names Equal and Canderel, and was a tremendous success. Like other artificially created sweeteners such as cyclamates and saccharine, there has been a storm of controversy as to whether use of aspartame in food and drinks produces adverse health effects.