Perhaps it is our hot summer weather that has made me more aware of cold things lately. But it recently struck me that iced tea is almost invariably spelled with the 'd' on the end of ice, but very cold water is always ice water. Does anybody know why this is so?
Ice water is the result of ice melting. Of course it is usually an addition of ice to tap water.
But tea, when you add ice to it is iced tea. Just as when you add salt to things, they are salted.
But now I'd rather have Liptons Cold Brew tea. Very good, and no work.
I don't know why, Jackie, but it's a cool question!
WW
Good question, Jackie, and great answer, Dr Bill!
How do y'all stress the words? I emphasize the first word in "ice water" and the second in "iced tea."
i would say iced water,and iced tea. i vaguely remember reading recently on the board that iced tea was invented in america by an english man. maybe it's another english/american thing
Dear dodyskin: my dictionary gives "ice" as a transitive verb:
vt.
iced, icing
1 to change into ice; freeze
2 to cover with ice; apply ice to
3 to cool by putting ice on, in, or
Putting icing on cake is a stingy way of making the cake last longer by
preventing loss of moisture. I can remember deliberately slamming kitchen
door, to make cake fall, so my mother would not put frosting on it, and
I could take large pieces without her remonstrating.I like very moist cake.
"i vaguely remember reading recently on the board that iced tea was invented in america by an english man."
Invented on a hot day at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 or so, by a tea vendor who was trying to boost sagging sales.
Hi Quayle: Yes, the World's Fair was held in St Louis in 1904. I suppose that the Fair is best known now from the 1944 movie Meet me in St Louis, but before then it was perhaps remembered by the song (written in 1904 by Andrew Sterling and Kerry Mills) which tells a fascinating domestic story:
When Louis came home to the flat,
He hung up his coat and his hat,
He gazed all around, but no wifey he found,
So he said "Where can Flossie be at?"
A note on the table he spied,
He read it just once, then he cried.
It ran, "Louis dear, it's too slow for me here,
So I think I will go for a ride."
[All together now]
Meet me in St Louis, Louis,
Meet me at the fair,
Don't tell me the lights are shining any place but there;
We will dance the Hoochee Koochee,
I will be your tootsie wootsie;
If you will meet me in St Louis, Louis,
Meet me at the fair.
The dresses that hung in the hall
Were gone, she had taken them all;
She took all his rings and the rest of his things;
The picture he missed from the wall.
"What! moving!" the janitor said,
"Your rent is paid three months ahead."
"What good is the flat?" said poor Louis, "Read that."
And the janitor smiled as he read. [Chorus]
Incidentally, does the Hoochee Koochee have any link with the 'Cooch'[sp?] dances at Coney Island referred to in Leonard Bernstein's On the town?
In the south there is no need to stress the 'iced' or the 'tea'. We simply ask for 'tea'. Hot tea is practically unheard of!
We do however have to specify 'sweet' or unsweetened'. Wonder why it's not 'sweetened'?????????????????
Continuing the "No real import" tone of this thread...
Putting icing on cake is a stingy way of making the cake last longer by preventing loss of moisture.
Alternately, it's an effective method for loading more chocolate onto your dessert.
And if you like moist cake,, Dr. Bill, and icing prevents loss of moisture, why wouldn't you want the cake iced? Seems akin to saying "I hate getting wet" and tossing out your brolly at the first sign of rain.
Easy! Once the cake had dropped and was heavy, soggy and indigestible no one else would want it and Dr Bill could have his fill.
dxb.
In the south there is no need to stress the 'iced' or the 'tea'. We simply ask for 'tea'. Hot tea is practically unheard of!
We do however have to specify 'sweet' or unsweetened'. Wonder why it's not 'sweetened'?????????????????
Indeed, Chemeng--hot tea is positively unnatural. I'll bet waitpeople say sweet as a timesaver.
When Louis came home to the flat,
He hung up his coat and his hat,
He gazed all around, but no wifey he found,
So he said "Where can Flossie be at?"
A note on the table he spied,
He read it just once, then he cried.
It ran, "Louis dear, it's too slow for me here,
So I think I will go for a ride."
Shouldn't this have been in the revived Limericks thread?
You know. It's weird when you think about it. You ice a cake or you frost it. But it really doesn't look like either ice or frost. It looks more like snow.
I think we should say we're going to snow the cake. And call the icing or frosting "snow" or "snowing."
Chocolate cake with chocolate snowing. How lovely! Pretty little chocolate snow moguls [aren't 'moguls' or something like that the bumps in the snow?]--candles standing like trees in the chocolate snow...
Batter regards,
WordWishing
re:But it really doesn't look like either ice or frost.
maybe not to much like ice, which during ice storms is often a clear glace, but like frost, it does too!
frost can be thick and textured, and almost pure white, and most definately on the opaque end of translucent! Lucky you if you don't often get a hard frost.. and i suspect Wow, or Bean or Bel all regualarly get thicker frosts than i do!
With all this talk I can't decide if I want something sweet or a cold beer in a frosty mug. QUIT already! [grin]
big glass of lemonade for me, thanks!
The elite of troy writes:
maybe not to much like ice, which during ice storms is often a clear glace, but like frost, it does too!Looks more like snow!!!
But you mentioned glazing, and that's another term that ignores snow.
Snow can fall in drifts. Think about what you do with that spatula. You make madmade drifts. I'm gonna snow my cakes from now on, that is, whenever I feel like cooking again. Mama Merle won't let me into the kitchen, and even with that chicken tikka masala recipe all ready to go and the cat hiding in the corner...
Batter regards,
WordWhipper
hot tea is positively unnatural
Horror!
Has the whole world turned upside down??
Interesting that 'icing' seems to be used more in certain parts of the US and 'frosting' in others. I'd like to get a fix on which is used where. Around here (mid-Atlantic USA) it's nearly always 'icing'. How about you Brits and Antipodeans?
Another set of words like this is 'dressing' vs. 'stuffing' and 'filling' (referring to the savory mixture that goes into a turkey, or a roulade, or pork chops, etc., or which is served by itself as a vegetable in Pa. Dutch eateries and called 'filling'). We use both 'stuffing' and 'dressing', and there is no rhyme or reason to which one is used when. How about the rest of you?
> Around here (mid-Atlantic USA) it's nearly always 'icing'. How about you Brits and Antipodeans?
Icing, and, medical opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, it isn't just a stingy way to stop a cake from drying out. It can, instead, add a great deal to a cake, especially if it has a different but complementary flavour. An example of this is a beautiful, incredibly dark chocolate cake my wife makes with an icing of pure white chocolate. Given the cost, it certainly isn't stingy. Heavenly, yes, stingy, no way.
[turning into a food thread]
especially if it has a different but complementary flavour
Sorry to do a "me too" post, but we had a banana cake with passionfruit icing the other day ... mmmm, yum! So nice. Perfectly complimentary flavours. Now, my stomach is grumbling... thanks, you guys.
[/turning out of a food thread]
Well, you ain't et till you've et the Southern Living carrot cake with cream cheese icing. That cream cheese icing is the best I have ever et. And the carrot cake ain't nothin' to ignore either. One without the other isn't so good as the two together. Draft effect. Racing again.
Who cares if it's a food thread?
We use "stuffing" and "dressing" both here in slightly southern Virginia. We do not use filling except for sweet things. We stuff our hens and turkeys, but we also serve dressing. I'd say we tend to use dressing more that stuffing, but this is an unscientific guess and I have been known to be wrong many times in my life. Fillings would be more for pies and other pastries.
What I'd like to know is what do you call that suet ball of plum pudding you hang in November to have ready by Christmas? Is there anything in particular that it should be called? I've heard pudding bag, but only in a child's song.
Batter regards,
WW
Britlish goes for
icing on a cake (
frosting on Frosties
) and
stuffing in a turkey or chicken.
Dressing is what you put on a salad, the most popular being
French Dressing (essentially oil, vinegar and mustard).
Dunno about the "suet ball of plum pudding" WW. Both Xmas puds and Xmas cakes don't tend to get hung up around here - instead they sit around in the kitchen and get "fed" loads of alcohol
. Funny thing is the bottle of spirits in the kitchen always disappears quicker than it goes into the cake/pud. Can't think why. [innocence]
Horror!
Has the whole world turned upside down??Yes, according to my beloved friend from Up Over. And he has the globe to prove it.
re:Dunno about the "suet ball of plum pudding" WW
Hard sauce! you can by it ready made, but its basicly confection (10X) sugar, butter (lots!) and a little cream..
but other desserts get soft custard, which in our house was just called "Birds" the brand name of the company that made the flavored powder mix.. in the north East, Birds is pretty much a staple good, and found in most stores.
Birds Custard is basically a cooked pudding (milk, sugar, vanilla flavor and some corn starch, heated till it thinkens.)but thinner.. it never gets as thick as pudding but always "pourable" like gravy. it can be "enriched" by adding an egg, and making it into a real custard.
In US, pudding is almost always a milk pudding, (sweetened, flavored milk, cooked with corn starch till thick, and cooled--but nowday, often instant-- no cooking needed)
Custard is similar, but it is thickened with eggs, (and is harder to make, since you need to heat the milk to thicken, but if you boil it, it tends to curdle. )
Both would be "soft solids" if molded into a cup, they could be unmolded and would keep there shape.(mostly, they would sag)
The hard sauce goes on the plum pudding after you've boiled or baked the plum pudding. The pudding itself, if made the old-fashioned way, is hung in a bag where the alcohol works a little wonder. If memory serves me, the suet pudding is made late November and hangs till Christmas...? I think some people pour more alcohol onto the pudding and flame it when serving, and then a boat of hard sauce is passed around and the dinner guests pour on as much sauce as they please--depending upon, I suppose, how sauced they are!
Complementary icing on cake does indeed do wonders. In our family you always got to choose what kind of cake you wanted for your birthday. My brothers and I always chose dark chocolate with peanut butter icing. PB icing is made by adding smooth peanut butter to vanilla butter cream icing.
Then there is one of my favorites, which is maybe not exactly 'icing' - gingerbread covered with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with finely grated orange zest.
Pardon my perpetuating a food thread.
>Has the whole world turned upside down??
Yes, according to my beloved friend from Up Over. And he has the globe to prove it. ..and the balls to stick down for it, of course.
There's a point - do Australasians go for iced tea?
When there's no beer readily available, I mean
>When there's no beer readily available, I mean
Well THAT'S not likely to happen in Oz anyway.
Both icing and frosting can be heard hereabouts, but they are two different things; icing is a thinner substance, used as a glaze; think of the drippy stuff which hardens when flowing halfway down a bundt cake; frosting has a higher fat content, is thicker, and is slathered on.
Dressing and stuffing are used interchangably.
Dressing can also refer to salad dressing, but is usually accompanied by the modifier salad.
And commercially available French dressing in the US is a sweetish red glop.
And fowl byproducts can be used as lawn dressing.
And ladies who serve cucumber sandwiches at teas like to talk about window dressings. A bloody bore to me
Are you forbidden sugar?
Try iced tea with a few drops of lemon juice and a good dollop of orange juice. Yum!
No caffiene?
For hot tea - I tried a lot of decaffeinated tea, the only one that tastes like "regular" tea is Twining's Decaf English Breakfast tea. Since tea has more caffeine than coffee it's nice to have a decent decaf tea.
I heard that if you cannot have caffeine and only regular tea is available, you can brew a pot of regular tea, let steep three minutes, pour off the tea then re-wet the same tea leaves and the result is a decaf tea.
Anyone confirm that?
In reply to:
Dear dodyskin: my dictionary gives "ice" as a transitive verb:
vt.
iced, icing
1 to change into ice; freeze
2 to cover with ice; apply ice to
3 to cool by putting ice on, in, or
What about as a slang term for "to murder," as used in mafia movies: "We iced him before he could sing to the cops."
Anyway this thread is making me thirsty...
Alex, this thread is making your thirsty?
This thread is making me hungry for about six different kinds of cake.
and sweltering in a heat wave, (day 8 of 90+ degrees with high humidity, and ozone making breathing difficult,) i am thinking of frost, rime and hoar.. i am thinking of ice and snow, sleet, slush, and of all things cold!
Yes, wow, I've heard the same thing. The caffeine is apparently spent in the first brewing of the leaves ~ if you want confirmation from an acknowledged expert, I'd suggest you contact the guy at
http://www.teasource.com. I don't remember his name, but he owns a tea specialty store in St Paul that I've been to several times, and he's been interviewed about tea on NPR. Ol' what's-his-name really knows his stuff.
(I looked around on the store website a little bit, but didn't find information useful to answering this question...)
Of course, in googling, I found
http://www.teatreasures.com/Teainfo.html, which confirms this idea:
"About 80 percent of the tea's caffeine content is released within the first 30 seconds of steeping. You
can enjoy all teas by decaffeinating the tea yourself by discarding the water after the first 30 seconds'
steeping, then adding fresh boiling water to the remaining leaves. Some say tea has constituents
which act to soothe and relax the body. These polyphenols begin to dissolve only in the third minute
of steeping. This is the secret to bedtime tea.
If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are heated, it will
cool you; if you're depressed, it will cheer you; if you're excited, it will calm you.—Norwood Pratt
There is more caffeine in a pound of tea than in a pound of coffee. However, a pound of coffee
produces about 40 cups, whereas a pound of tea produces about 200 cups. Green tea has about
one-third as much caffeine as black tea, and oolong has about two-thirds as much."
In reply to:
and oolong has about two-thirds as much.
ah! that's why I like oolong...
In reply to:
This thread is making me hungry for about six different kinds of cake.
My three-year stint as a baker cured my sweet tooth.
It's been so hot here lately in Kentucky, and we're in a drought. I'm surprised I haven't been dreaming of lemoinade.
do Australasians go for iced tea?
Bit late, but ... no, it's not a big thing here. I've seen it for sale in shops but not hugely popular. (Then again, I'm not a tea drinker - hot or cold - so I'm probably not the best person to be responding. OTOH, I'm the only Australasian responding, so who cares?) 
Anyway this thread is making me thirsty...
A pretzel or two too many, huh Alex?
I concur with my convict-descended comrades. Iced tea is not at all big up here. Of course, tea of any sort is foul devilspawn, an apostate imitation of the true ambrosia, qahwa forever.
I concur with my convict-descended comrades..whilst not exactly being "thick as thieves".
Wasn't that the title of a
Split Enz album?
tea of any sort is foul devilspawnSpeaking as someone with a tendency towards volume drinking, I have to say that I'd be a nervous wreck inside a week or two if I had to replace tea with coffee. Tea may have more caffeine, but it's never given me the shakes.
"Self-discipline"? What's that?
In reply to:
.whilst not exactly being "thick as thieves".
Wasn't that the title of a Split Enz album?
I think that's an album by another group from down under, INXS. Come to think of it I think it was called "Listen Like Thieves." Their album "Shabooh Shoobah" still sounds great after all this time. Too bad about the singer.
As a bass player I have to add that the bass part in Split Enz's "I Got You" is one of my all time favorites.
an album by another group from down under, INXS. Come to think of it I think it was called "Listen Like Thieves"You're certainly right there, Alex - though as it turns out I was thinking about an entirely British group,
The Jam!
Have to say INXS didn't do much for me, and certainly compared to Split Enz (and then, in a very different vein, Crowded House & Finn bros stuff) INXS pales into insignificance.
Yes, I'm completely biased - and an acoustic guitarist rather than bass-player.
AHHHHHHHH! I can't believe it! Somebody else in America knows Split Enz! Ohhhhh, ALEX! I'm listening to I Got You right now!! I've never paid all that much attention to the bass part, being rather fond of a certain former non-bass guitarist who introduced me to this group.
But you're right, it's cool. [cranking it up] It took me a long time to start paying attention to the lyrics of "Charlie", but when I did...I just got shivers of dread. These guys were
good.