How to make Earl Grey tea — and a London Fog

Earl Grey is black tea flavoured with oil of bergamot, the fragrant rind of a small, sour citrus grown mostly in Calabria in the south of Italy. It is the most famous flavoured tea in the world, and the easiest to spoil: what is perfume at three minutes is soap at six.

How to brew it

Water: freshly boiled — Whittard of Chelsea gives 95 to 98°C for black tea. Leaf: one teaspoon, about 2 grams, or one teabag, per cup. Time: three to four minutes, the short end of Whittard's three to five, because the scent is in a hurry and the tannins are not. Then take the leaf out.

A lighter base tea — many Earl Greys are built on Ceylon or a China black — will take a slightly cooler kettle and a shorter steep. An Earl Grey on a strong Assam base will stand the full four minutes and milk.

Milk or lemon?

Either, but not both. Lemon underlines the citrus; milk softens it into something rounder. A good many people take it plain, which is arguably the point of a scented tea.

A London Fog

An Earl Grey latte. Brew a strong cup — two teabags or two teaspoons in about 150 ml of water for four minutes — then add a teaspoon or two of vanilla syrup and top up with hot, frothed milk. Vancouver is usually given the credit for it rather than London, which is the sort of thing that happens to British names abroad.

The Earl

The tea is named after Charles Grey, the second Earl Grey, Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834. How the name attached itself to the tea is less certain than any tin will tell you. The romantic version has a Chinese mandarin presenting the recipe to the Earl, who never went to China. Twinings and Jacksons of Piccadilly have each claimed the original blend. Tea scented with bergamot is on record from the 1820s, but the first advertisements known to call it "Earl Grey" are from the 1880s, half a century after the Earl left office. What can be said is that the tea is very good, and that the Earl got the credit.