Top pairings

Some unusual food pairings for tea

Posted by Signe Johansen (Google+) on April 21 2024 at 07:32

Most people wouldn’t think in terms of combining tea and food beyond the classic pairings of Indian teas with a traditional afternoon scone or sponge, or jasmine tea with Chinese food but there are many other possibilities to explore, says Signe Johansen in this post from our archives.

There are certainly parallels between tea tasting and wine tasting. Alex Probyn, Master Tea Blender and owner of bespoke tea blending business Blends for Friends told me that similar guidelines for wine and food matching apply to tea and food matching: white wine and white/green teas match with fish and lighter meats and foods that require some astringency to cut through their richness. Red (and to some extent ros) wine and black/oolong tea have higher tannins, thus match well with protein-rich meats and cheeses, and clash with oily fish.

Savoury matches
At TeaSmith, an excellent match is a savoury, umami-rich walnut and miso biscuit (above) that accompanies acidic green teas particularly well.

Yauatcha’s Dim Sum can be paired with jasmine tea, but I’d encourage you to be more adventurous and try their fine range of oolongs, green and white teas with their authentic food. The staff is trained to deal with tea and food matching requests.

Genmaicha (a Japanese green tea with roasted rice) makes a wonderful match with sushi – the rice flavour complementing the delicate sushi rice and green tea’s astringency cutting through the fattier fish such as salmon or tuna.

Staying with the Japanese theme, at Roka I sampled a Himalayan tea with their robata-grilled sea bream. The distinctive fennel character of the tea worked really well with fish.

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