Updated June 2026

The last Friday in June is National Cream Tea Day, which begs the question: What is cream tea?

Most Americans might think the obvious: It’s adding cream to your tea. But no.

Cream tea is a light British afternoon snack of a pot of black tea, scones, clotted cream, and fruit jam—typically strawberry (photo #1).

The more elaborate afternoon tea, which originated as a more substantial snack*, additionally includes finger sandwiches and a variety of cakes (photo #2). For cream you need only prepare tea and scones.

Long before tea arrived in England—and long before farmers created clotted cream—people put cream and jam on bread.

The custom appears to have begun in the 10th century, and we posit that in addition to being delicious in itself, it may have been a way to use cream to soften yesterday’s bread.
 
Below:

> The history of tea in England.

> What did the English drink before tea arrived?

> Clotted cream is created, to later become the “cream” of cream tea.

> The history of cream tea.

> A recipe for homemade clotted cream.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

> The different types of tea: a photo glossary.

> The history of tea.

> The year’s 23 tea holidays.

> The history of jam, jelly, and preserves.

> The numerous types of jam and preserves: a photo glossary.

> The different types of cream: a photo glossary.
 
 
TEA ARRIVES IN ENGLAND

Tea from China arrived in the early 17th century, when Dutch traders from the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company sailed home to Europe with chests of it.

The precious leaves arrived in England in the 1650s.

At first, tea was a novelty, served in London’s relatively new coffee houses. Few people drank it.

The famous diarist Samuel Pepys wrote about his first tea experience in 1660: “…and afterwards I did send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I had never drank before, and went away.”

That’s the first written documentation of tea drinking in England.
 
 
Tea Becomes Popular

Tea drinking got a boost in 1662 with the arrival of Portugal’s Catherine of Braganza, who became the wife of King Charles II.

When her ship docked in Portsmouth on May 14, 1662, the travel-weary royal asked for a cup of tea. There was none to be had in Portsmouth.

But among the goods she brought from Portugal was a chest of tea, the favorite drink of the Portuguese Court.

Catherine popularized the drink at the English Court and among the British nobility, which was then embraced by the wealthy gentry. It was a luxury.

As the East India Company ramped up imports and competition drove prices down—roughly the 1720s–1750s—tea became accessible to the middle classes: tradespeople, prosperous farmers, and yeomen‡. By around 1750, a yeoman household drinking tea daily would not have been remarkable.

But it was still so pricey, that it was kept in small locked tea chests, with the key carried on her person by the lady of the house.

At time, punishingly high import duties meant that the majority of tea consumed in England through much of the 18th century was smuggled. This actually accelerated tea’s spread down the social ladder, since smuggled tea was far cheaper than legal tea.

It’s estimated that by mid-century, smuggled tea outsold legal tea substantially.
 
 
Tea Reaches The Working Class (1780s Onwards)

Prime Minister Pitt the Younger’s Commutation Act of 1784 slashed tea duties from around 119% to 12.5%. This collapsed the smuggling trade overnight and made legal tea genuinely affordable.

By the early 19th century, tea was considered the “national drink” of England—effectively the working-class drink—although costlier than ale.

It’s important to note that ale was the safe alternative to the potentially harmful water supply; the brewing process killed many pathogens, making it far safer than drinking the untreated water of the time. However, boiling water for tea also killed waterborne pathogens.

Plus, while an agricultural laborer could function adequately with ale in his system, a factory worker operating machinery could not do as well. Employers increasingly discouraged or forbade drinking ale during working hours. Tea had the extra advantage of caffeine.

Finally, cheap Caribbean sugar transformed tea from a slightly bitter curiosity into something genuinely pleasurable and calorie-providing for people whose diets were often inadequate. The sweetened cup became a small daily comfort.

By the late 18th century, tea was [source].
 
 
WHAT DID THE ENGLISH DRINK BEFORE TEA?

Before tea arrived, there was coffee. But coffee was also a relatively recent arrival.

Coffee became available in England, also via the Dutch traders, no later than the 16th century.

According to a 1583 account, the first coffeehouse in England was opened in St. Michael’s Alley in Cornhill, the historic nucleus and financial center of modern London.

In 1650 The Grand Cafe opened in Oxford. It’s still open today but as a wine bar.

Oxford’s Queen’s Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is still serving coffee today.

By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses throughout England.

However, women were banned from them in England, and other countries as well [source].

According to this British wiki on coffee culture, “as their husbands, brothers, fathers and friends began to spend more and more time in coffeehouses,” they became something of a clubhouse, open to all…except women.

Although the lower and middle-class men were getting a chance to speak up and discuss current issues with scholars and journalists, women were still excluded from this vital part of society [ibid.].

[1] Cream tea: a pot of tea, a scone, clotted cream—the “cream” in cream tea—and preserves (photo: The Nibble).

[2] Afternoon tea is a more elaborate affair adding finger sandwiches and cakes to the cream tea (photo © Perth Product Photography | Pinterest).

[3] You can serve any flavor of preserves or jam you prefer. While strawberry remains the favorite, apricot and raspberry are popular. Above: blueberry preserves (photo © Alexandra Kusper | Unsplash).

[4] Clotted cream, one of the four components of cream tea (with scones, preserves, and tea). Here’s how to make your own from heavy whipping cream (photo © Cupcake Project).

[5] You can purchase a jar of clotted cream, which does well in a pinch, if not as good as fresh (photo © iGourmet).

[6] Catherine of Breganza, who popularized tea in England (photo via Wikipedia).

Clotted cream is a thickened cream made by heating full-cream cow’s milk in shallow pans using steam or a water bath and then leaving it to cool slowly.

As it cools, the cream content rises to the surface and forms “clots,” hence the name [source].

It is slightly yellow in hue, due to the high carotene levels in the grass eaten by the cows; and tastes like a slightly sweet blend of unsalted butter and heavy cream.

It was originally made by dairy farmers to reduce the amount of unused cream in the long era before refrigeration.

Clotted cream predates any written record of its invention. It’s documented in Devon and Cornwall from at least the medieval period, although the technique may be considerably older.

In fact, some food historians suggest the method could even have arrived with Phoenician traders, who are believed to have visited Cornwall as early as 500 B.C.E. in search of tin.

(This is speculative but not implausible: Scalded cream preparations exist in other ancient Mediterranean traditions, notably in Turkey and across the Middle East, where kaymak† is made by an almost identical process, but with buffalo milk, which makes it tangier than the cow’s milk version.)

The most plausible English origin story is that clotted cream arose in the dairy farming communities of Devon and Cornwall, where extra cream was preserved by scalding with gentle heating.

The cattle breeds in those two areas and the lush, wet pastureland that fed the cattle produced exceptionally fatty milk, conducive to this technique.

Someone, at some point, noticed that the thick, crusted top of the scalded cream was particularly delicious and it became a regional specialty, rather than merely a byproduct of food preservation.

Thus, clotted cream was likely “discovered by accident” rather than intentionally invented—and probably discovered by multiple independent farmers in Cornwall or Devon who were scalding their extra (and extra-fatty) cream.

Territorial rivalry: While it has long been disputed whether clotted cream originated in Devon or Cornwall, and which county makes it the best, the clever Cornish struck a blow in 1993 by applying for the term “Cornish clotted cream” to have a Protected Designation of Origin (P.D.O.) in the European Union, granted in 1998 (it must be made from milk produced in Cornwall and have a minimum butterfat content of 55%).

The First Appearance Of Clotted Cream?

The creation of clotted cream is believed to date back as far as the end of the 10th century at Tavistock Abbey in Devon, with the Benedictine monks of Tavistock Abbey.

After their abbey was ransacked by Vikings in 997 C.E., the monks rebuilt with the help of Ordulf, Earl of Devon, who had founded the abbey in 974. The monks fed the workers were who were helping with the restoration with bread, clotted cream, and strawberry preserves [source].

Editor’s note: They drank ale with their meal, since tea would not arrive in England until the 1650s—and remained prohibitively expense for the next 100 years.

The 1658 cook book, The Compleat Cook had a recipe for “clouted cream” [source].

So, some 370 years later, celebrate the day with your own cream tea. And pile clotted cream and jam on your breakfast toast.
 
The Clotted Cream Debate: Devon Vs. Cornwall

In the U.K., cream tea is a subject of the “Great Debate” over how to assemble the scone. The debate began between two South West England counties, Devon and Cornwall, both of which are known for their clotted cream, where the local cattle breeds produce particularly fatty milk.

Both versions are enjoyed across the U.K.:

 
Editor’s Note: We’ve tried both ways and both work. But we prefer the Cornish method—jam first—for an entirely different reason. You can load as much preserves as you like on the bottom, and as much clotted cream on the top. With the Devon method, cream on the bottom, you’re limited in the amount of preserves you can pile on without squishing the cream.

Is Milk Served With The Tea?

The customary option is a small splash of whole milk, added to the cup either before or after the tea is poured—the before-or-after debate being another minor kerfuffle, though less fierce than the Devon-Cornwall debate.

Some people take their tea black, and sugar is a matter of personal preference, but cream or half-and-half in the tea would be considered rather unusual and un-English.

The rich clotted cream on the scone would overwhelm any cream in the tea; but more to the point, the English palate developed around tea with milk. Cream was a relative luxury.

The U.S. deviated from the tradition, adding cream—generally light cream or half-and-half—to coffee and tea, although today regular milk (5% fat) is more common (not to mention 2%, 0%, and plant milk).
 

[8] The clotted cream debate: Devon vs. Cornish vs. It Doesn’t Matter, They’re Both Delicious (photo: The Nibble).
 
 
THE HISTORY OF CREAM TEA

The cream tea tradition in Devon and Cornwall long predates the Duchess of Bedford created afternoon tea around 1849.

It grew naturally from the monastic and agricultural traditions of the Southwest, with the monks at Tavistock Abbey in Devon credited with feeding workers bread, clotted cream, and ale as early as the 10th or 11th century, with tea eventually replacing ale as the beverage served with it once tea became affordable to rural folk in the 18th century (by the mid 1700s).

Cream tea is fundamentally a regional, rural, and ancient tradition, while afternoon tea is an urban, aristocratic, fashionable Victorian creation. The two are related but distinct in origin, with cream tea being considerably more rooted in everyday life and far older.
 
 
RECIPE: CLOTTED CREAM

Clotted cream is made by heating high-fat cream very gently and slowly over a long period. You need heavy cream with at least 36%–40% butterfat. Ultra-pasteurized cream won’t work well, as the processing interferes with the clotting.

Each cup of heavy cream yields 6 tablespoons of clotted cream (four cups of cream yields 1.5 cups of clotted cream).

While it takes one minute to prepare (just pour the cream into a pan), it takes 8 hours to cook and requires an oven, slow cooker, or rice cooker with a temperature that stays low and steady for 10 hours without turning off. This can take place overnight.

Then, you need to refrigerate it for another 8 hours and skim the thick clotted layer from the top. The whey underneath can be used in baking (we drank it!).

> Follow this recipe with step-by-step photos.

> Here’s an Instant Pot recipe.

________________

*Afternoon tea originated as an elaborate snack served between the light lunches and late dinners served in the early 1800s. It is usually served between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. It was a large spread with finger sandwiches and scones, cakes, macaroons, and other tidbits. Many people mistakenly call this “high tea,” which is not an elegant affair but a simple workman’s dinner (with a cup of tea, of course). Here’s more about afternoon tea, a tradition begun by a very hungry duchess.

†What did the English drink before coffee? Beer, cider, milk. The eater supply was often polluted and disease-bearing, so only boiled water could be safely consumed.

‡By the 18th century, the popularity of tea had grown so much that everyone wanted it. But it was still too expensive for people of modest means. Smugglers began bringing tea into the country illegally, to avoid the tea tax and thus sell it for less. Eventually, as it was estimated that more illegal tea was brought into the country than legal tea, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger slashed the tea tax from 119% to 12.5% in 1783. That eliminated the illegal smuggling trade, and with affordable tea, consumption skyrocketed [source].

‡‡In Turkey it’s eaten at breakfast, spread on bread with honey. It’s also served as a side with sweet pastries and desserts, particularly ekmek kadayıfı (a bread pudding) and künefe (a shredded wheat and cheese pastry). It’s made across the former Ottoman world: in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Iran, and the Levant, under various names and with local variations.
 

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