Tea Cocktail (1925)
Chilled green China tea mixed with Scotch whisky or Irish whiskey and a little sugar syrup, then strained into a small glass.
- Original yieldYield
- 1 cocktail1 cocktail
- PrepPrep time
- TotalTotal time
Allow 10 minutes for freshly brewed tea to cool before mixing.
Published Updated
Original recipe: 1 cocktail
The story behind the recipe
Strong tea doesn't have to mean tea left on its leaves all afternoon. Toye and Adair made that distinction in 1925: for their Tea Cocktail, brew green China tea strongly but remove the leaves within five minutes.
A teapot at the drinks table
Drinks: Long and Short gives Scotch whisky or Irish whiskey a companion from the household teapot. Tea receives almost as much space as the spirit, with just a little syrup or sugar.
That makes the leaves an ingredient worth choosing. Green teas can be grassy, toasted or mild; start with one you enjoy as tea. A bottle of whisky won't turn an unpleasant brew into a better-tasting one.
The recipe has no soda and no lemon juice. It's a cold, lightly sweetened tea-and-whisky cocktail, with an optional lemon peel for aroma. If you picture a long iced tea or a citrus sour, the small stemmed serving offers something different.
Read more about this recipe
Strong, then off the leaves
The modern method uses a three-minute steep and strains the tea before chilling. Strength comes from the amount of leaves as well as the waiting time. The book's five-minute limit gives you a useful ceiling, not a reason to steep every batch for exactly five minutes.
For more guests, increase the tea you prepare while keeping the steeping time fixed. A larger teapot isn't an invitation to leave the leaves working while you set every glass on the table.
Measure the brewed liquid that goes into the cocktail. The recipe's tea quantity is the amount poured into the mixing glass, not all the water used for brewing. Some liquid stays with the leaves and strainer.
Whisky beside the fragrance
Blended Scotch or a gentle Irish whiskey leaves room to notice the tea. A strongly smoky Scotch would be a more assertive partner. Choose according to the flavor you want from the glass, while keeping the measured brew unchanged.
Toye and Adair ask for “old Scotch or Irish liqueur whisky.” We leave the age to your choice of Scotch or Irish whiskey; the syrup is measured separately.
Toye and Adair gave one teaspoon of syrup to the six-person batch. The small modern serving uses a quarter teaspoon for easier measuring. It's still a modest sweetening, enough to sit beside tea and whisky without making sweet iced tea.
The quiet choice on a menu
The 1925 drinks-book article places tea beside coffee, marmalade and the spice liqueurs in Kingston. Tea is the more restrained of those cupboard ingredients, with its fragrance and light bitterness making the interest.
Once the brew is cold, the final mixing is brief. Stirring with ice chills the measured liquids and introduces dilution before the drink enters a ready glass. The leaves have already been removed, so no extra brewing happens while it waits for the pour.
An optional lemon peel gives the nose a little citrus without adding another portion of acid to the liquid. Leave it out if you want to follow the tea's aroma on its own.
Give the brew its few minutes, then let it go. That is the old advice worth taking into other tea drinks too.
Make it your wayOriginal: 1 serving · Makes 1 cocktail
Original recipe: 1 cocktail
Ingredients
For 1 cocktail. Quantities are shown as written.
Source measurement convention: US customary. Explicit unit definitions take precedence; unconfirmed measures must be checked before conversion.
Original quantities for 1 cocktail.
- Blended Scotch whisky or smooth Irish whiskey1 1/2 fl oz
- Strong green China tea, steeped and chilled1 1/4 fl oz
- Simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water by volume)1/4 tsp
- Strip lemon peel (optional, for expressing)1
Measurement notes
- blended Scotch whisky or smooth Irish whiskey, strong green China tea, steeped and chilled: US fl oz: 1 = 29.5735 ml (rounded).
- simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water by volume): US tsp: 1 = 4.9289 ml (rounded).
Measurement notes
Original ingredients
- 1 1/2 fl oz blended Scotch whisky or smooth Irish whiskeyUS fl oz: 1 = 29.5735 ml (rounded).
- 1 1/4 fl oz strong green China tea, steeped and chilledUS fl oz: 1 = 29.5735 ml (rounded).
- 1/4 tsp simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water by volume)US tsp: 1 = 4.9289 ml (rounded).
- 1 strip lemon peel (optional, for expressing)
Equipment
Teapot or heatproof glass measuring jug
Fine-mesh tea strainer
Mixing glass
Hawthorne strainer or julep strainer
Barspoon
Small rounded stemmed cocktail glass
Jigger or measuring glass
Instructions
Brew, strain and chill the tea
Brew the green tea using 2 g (approx. 1 tsp) loose green China tea leaves per 60 ml (2 fl oz) of hot water (80°C / 175°F). When scaling up for multiple servings, maintain this leaf-to-water ratio and prepare enough total liquid. Keep the steeping time fixed at 3 minutes regardless of batch size (do not exceed 5 minutes). Strain the liquid and chill it completely in an ice bath.
Combine tea, whiskey and syrup
Measure the chilled strong green China tea amount shown in the ingredient list into a mixing glass, then add the blended Scotch whisky or smooth Irish whiskey and the simple syrup.
Stir with cracked ice
Add the cracked ice and stir with a barspoon for 20 to 25 seconds until thoroughly chilled and integrated.
Strain into a chilled glass
Strain through a Hawthorne strainer into a chilled small rounded stemmed cocktail glass.
Add optional lemon peel
Express the optional lemon peel over the drink to release citrus oils, then set the peel on the rim.
Estimated calories 100 kcal
Nutrition portion: whole recipe · Original yield: 1 cocktail
Source & assumptions
Ingredient-based estimate using CoFID 2021, USDA SR Legacy (2018). About 100 kcal per nutrition portion (whole recipe). Uses a representative whisky at 40% ABV and brewed green tea. The small syrup measure is modeled from equal volumes of sugar and water after cooling. Optional lemon peel is excluded. Actual ingredients and preparation affect the estimate.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
The original 1925 recipe used 1 teaspoon of syrup for the entire six-person batch (about 1/6 tsp per drink). For this single serving, 1/4 tsp simple syrup is used for practical home measuring (a 50% increase in syrup quantity). To mix a six-person batch matching the 1925 original, combine 9 fl oz whisky and 7 1/2 fl oz chilled green tea with 1 tsp simple syrup (or 1 1/2 tsp to match this single-serve adaptation).
Original recipe notes
These notes describe the original recipe. Quantities mentioned here do not change when you adjust servings.
Toye and Adair, Drinks: Long and Short (1925), p. 25: original book. The 1½ fl oz whisky and 1¼ fl oz brewed tea retain the 6:5 ratio. One teaspoon of syrup across six source servings becomes ¼ teaspoon per drink here, a 50% increase. The stirring details and optional lemon peel are modern choices.
Remove the leaves within five minutes; the written method uses three. Measure the finished tea, not the entire starting brew water.
A small stemmed glass of about 150 ml capacity leaves room for dilution; its pictured shape isn't prescribed by the book.
Read the scaling guide. Times, temperatures and equipment need their own consideration. Open the recipe tool to review and correct individual amounts.
Sources and attribution
Nina Toye & A. H. Adair, Drinks: Long and Short (London: William Heinemann, 1925), p. 25.
Recipe details
- Recipe tradition
- Vintage
- Course or meal
- Drink
- Cuisine
- Other / International
- Source decade
- 1920s
- Browse category
- Drinks & Cocktails