It’s the time and the season to set the record straight about the innovations by women that are the core of the specialty tea industry in the U.S. For too many years now we’ve been crediting the wrong people for creating two of the most consequential innovations affecting the $$$ success of tea today.
Who Really Invented Iced Tea & the Teabag?
When I began working and teaching in the tea industry, the stories told about these two inventions seemed so reasonable, most of us didn’t consider looking further. Fortunately, over the last few years, some tea historians delved a little deeper so we can now confidently correct our errors. Thomas Sullivan was not the first person to sew tea leaves into small individual serving-sized bags and Richard Belchynden ‘s serving of iced tea at the St. Louis Worlds Fair in 1904 was not the creation of iced tea. We can document that women innovators and creators at the heart of building a successful specialty tea business in the U.S. beyond their roles as customers.
Iced Tea Gained Media Attention at the St. Louis Worlds Fair 1904
Richard Belchynden, a tea merchant, was offering samples of hot tea. He couldn’t even give the tea away. As the story goes and is factually correct, he purchased ice and began serving his samples either chilled or iced with much greater success. While we can all respect Belchynden’s ingenuity – especially those of us who know what it’s like to have booths at tea festivals and farmers’ markets, this was not the moment of invention. In fact, there are published recipes for iced tea several decades earlier and the social history of cold tea punch that precede that.
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Gray Litho. Co. after Charles Graham, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Understandably, this event has been recorded in U.S. food history as having changed our culture by having popularized the hamburger, the hot dog, peanut butter, the club sandwich, cotton candy, the ice cream cone and, iced tea. Let’s just say that Richard Belchynden was at the right place and at the right time to enjoy the advantage of mass publicity.
The True “Invention” of Iced Tea? We May Never Know.
It is unlikely that we will ever know the exact event that inspired the first moment when someone either intentionally or accidentally discovered the luscious goodness of cold tea. But that moment of brilliance most likely happened in a kitchen and the inventor was probably a woman. That moment of delight was not recorded. These ancestors didn’t stop to dream of how their inspiration would continue to be one of the driving forces in an entire industry.
What we believe is that cold tea became popular as a “punch” with the addition of sugar and alcohol. Some of the recipes became popular and were shared among hostesses and often served at social gatherings. We do know that both green and black teas were available and both used in these cold tea punch recipes.
First Published Recipe for Iced Tea
It was Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln who first published a cookbook, The Boston Cook Book, in 1896 and included instructions for proper preparation of iced tea:
“Ice Tea or Russian Tea – Make the tea by the first receipt, strain it from the grounds, and keep it cool. When ready to serve, put two cubes of block sugar in a glass, half fill with broken ice, add a slice of lemon, and fill the glass with cold tea.”
Unlike the story of iced tea at the reknown Worlds Fair, Mary Lincoln’s story was never told with the fanfare of popular media at the time. But it still represents an important part of our food culture and tea history.
Mary Lincoln was part of the original Boston Cooking School, was a proponent of Domestic Science and the standardization of recipes as she authored at least six different cookbooks. She was a student at the Boston Cooking School, a teacher, and eventually its first principal, creating specialized courses like “sick-room cookery”, designed for nurses and caregivers.
About this classic cookbook, published by the Boston firm of Roberts Brothers in 1884, she commented, “… was done primarily to meet the need of a textbook for our pupils and save the copying of recipes”.
Mary Lincoln, like most of the cooks and hostesses who served iced tea, never considered that it would become even more popular in the U.S. than a piping hot pot of tea.
The Teabag; Originally Named “Tea Leaf Holder”
The history of the teabag is more easily established. There is a patent on record – Patent #723,287. But the holders of this original patent are not the person most often given credit. The error we are correcting today is the often told saga of Thomas Sullivan, a tea wholesaler who wanted to reduce the cost of sending samples to retailers in metal tins. In approximately 1904, he had sample portions stitches in white fabric, much more economically dispatched to his customers. As the story goes, his customers responded with orders – not just for the tea, but for having it stitched in the bags. Communication being what it was, it is unlikely that he was aware that Mary McLaren and Roberta Lawson had filed for the patent in 1901 and it had been granted in 1903.
To all whom it may concern:
Be it known that we, Roberta C. Lawson and Mary McLaren, citizens of the united states, residing at Milwaukee, WI have invented a new and useful Improvement in Tea-Leaf Holders, of which the following is a description, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, which are a part of this specification.
The women included extremely detailed text about the need for the device and also the construction.
The Need:
Heretofore it has been common to prepare “tea” – the infusion so designated – by putting a quantity of tea-leaves in a pot and pouring hot water thereon, . . . This practice involves the use of a considerable quantity of tea-leaves to prepare the desired supply of tea, and the tea, if not used directly, soon becomes stale or wanting in freshness, and therefore unsatisfactory and frequently a large portion of the tea thus prepared and not used directly has to be thrown away…
Their Solution:
… our object in the present invention is to provide means whereby a small quantity of tea, so much only is required for a single cup of tea, can be placed in a cup and have water poured thereon to produce only a cup of tea fresh for immediate use.
While little is known about Mary McLaren and Roberta Lawson at this time, I believe that, in time, it will be possible to uncover more about these women. In the meantime, we can recognize their contribution not only to the tea industry but also to the growing tea culture and lifestyle.
One Last Thought
If there is one take-away from revisiting our creative tea ancestors that I would like to leave with you, it is that we never know in a given moment of creating what will be fleeting and what will endure. Not one of the innovators we featured today did so with consideration for the future. They were meeting the needs of the moment. They were solving problems with the tools that they had available.
Let us be inspired!
