A couple days in the small city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania could easily be passed in any one of the local brewpubs. Miniature cubes of salt that bedazzle handmade pretzels help the drinker maintain a constant thirst. This is a place where you can order a “lager” at the bar and automatically receive a Yuengling. But, if you stumble away from the German-influenced beer space, you can see outside of the city, where the Pennsylvania Dutch make their home. Here, you might find meadow tea.
Many people refer to Lancaster County as “Amish Country,” but the reality is more complicated. The Pennsylvania Dutch are not necessarily Amish, though the Amish do contrast most starkly with the average image of American life. When Germans came to Lancaster County, most were Lutheran, but less conservative Pennsylvania Dutch, like the Lutherans and even the Mennonites, became largely acculturated to “typical” American life.
So, while the Amish are some of the few people who still speak Pennsylvanian German, the region’s cuisine may be shared more broadly across religious denominations.
Meadow tea is one such regional drink, but if you want to sound local, I am told, it is better to say “metta tea.” The drink is a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition. Really, the drink is a tisane made from an infusion of native species of wild mint with added sugar. The mint could be spearmint, wintergreen, dittany, mountain mint, or blue mountain mint. In the language of folk botany, pick any herb with a four-sided square stem (a characteristic of the mint family Lamiaceae) A similar tea may be brewed from native blue balsam or white balsam. According to Pennsylvania Folklife Summer 1982, blue balsam was the most popular and sweetest of these meadow teas. (Shaner)
To say that meadow tea is just one beverage is slightly confusing. It can be made from several different aromatic herbs native to the area, and these herbs can be mixed into one infusion. One man from New Holland recollected fishing at his parents house in northern Lancaster County decades ago. Back by the creek where he fished, mint grew wild. His mother would pick it and mix it with regular imported tea and lemon juice. He remember it as “pungent.”
Wild mint is native to vast swaths of North America. So meadow tea is traditionally a foraged product. As the mint comes up in the spring and early summer, locals in Lancaster County pick it before it goes to seed. Of course, many folks in Lancaster today have small perennial patches of mint in their gardens to ensure a stable supply of the drink. They boil the leaves, cool the infusion, and sweeten it with an ample supply of sugar.
Most often, the tea is made from freshly picked leaves and it represents a refreshing draught against summer’s heat. An article in The Pennsylvania Dutchman from the summer of 1956 explains, “One of the most important pauses for refreshment is to the farmer what the coffee break is for the white collar city worker.” (Heller) These breaks often occurred around nine in the morning, and refreshing teas would be brought out to the field instead of coffees.
Refreshing, yes, but also apparently powerful. One text warns, “Of these simple herbs only a few leaves should be used for each cup of tea; otherwise a person may get a surfeit of them.” (Mayer) A local Mennonite woman who runs a health food store and is known for her knowledge of traditional cures confirmed the idea. She told me that older people need to be careful how much meadow tea they drink. According to her, it contains Vitamin K, which she said thickens the blood. Drying the leaves, she added, removes the vitamin altogether. Some volunteers at the New Holland Historical Society also warn that the tea can stimulate some allergies.
Perhaps a more processed version of this drink, Amish Cooking describes “Peppermint-Ade,” a sweetened minty drink also used as a refreshment. The recipe given in the 1977 text, however, does not require wild mint. “A cool, refreshing drink for men who work under the hot sun in the fields is peppermint water. This is made by dipping a toothpick in pure peppermint oil then swishing it off in sweetened, cold spring water. This is done several times until the desired strength is obtained.”
This meadow tea sounds like a lovely local drink! But here I am in Lancaster in February searching for a product that hasn’t been in season since early last summer. A little faith, a little research, and a little help from a Pennsylvania Dutch woman can conjure up the drink I desire. While meadow tea is a summer refreshment, it is still traditional to preserve mint for use off season. The tea itself can be boiled down into an extract, the mint can be frozen, or the leaves can be dried.
Drying, in particular, has a long track record of bringing the flavor of meadow tea into winter months. Domestic Economy Or How to Make Hard Times Good and Good Times Better, published in Lancaster in 1893, explains, “peppermint, pennyroyal, dittany, and a long list of others growing wild and costing nothing but the trouble of gathering, can be spread upon paper, or suspended from the rafters on the garret until dry. The aroma is stronger and finer when the plant is in bloom.” (Mayer)
Encouraged by this possibility, I head to Central Market in downtown Lancaster. The market claims to be the longest running farmer’s market in America–bringing produce to the public since 1730. Today, it is a center of Lancaster County tourism where visitors can buy coffee, pastries, sandwiches, produce, meat, fish, and souvenirs. I head to Marley’s Country Goods, a bakery that has sold meadow tea in the past.
A bonneted woman in plain dress is working the stand which offers a variety of freshly baked pastries, preserved fruits, and pickled vegetables. When I ask for meadow tea, she responds in an accent I am not familiar with. It’s fluent but stumbling, lilting and rustic. She tells me that she will have to check to see if they have any mint tea syrup from last summer. She will call me to let me know.
And I get the call! She will brew me meadow tea that night and have it at the market the following day. I order five pints and sleep soundly.
When I arrive at the market the next day, five pint bottles of pale yellow liquid are in a small ice bath. In total, I pay $6.50 for this custom brewed batch of meadow tea. The fact that she brewed the tea to my order speaks volumes about hospitality here and highlights the homemade side of business. The woman who made the tea tells me she brewed it from dried spearmint leaves, but she has never made cold meadow tea in the winter before. Sometimes, she says, they will brew hot mint tea to soothe a sore throat or calm an upset stomach.
I take my five pints and hit the road. I peel back the little plastic scarf that seals the lid on. The tea is sweet, then minty, then smooth and cool. Many locals I’ve talked to have derided it for its sugar content, and it is slightly syrupy from the amount of sugar that it contains. It tastes like mint honey, but it has something of a spice to it, a fresh tingling of the tongue. For a winter day, it is a very sunny drink.
I cannot comment on the flavor of freshly harvested meadow tea, but a bottle of this every so often couldn’t hurt. A local with a lifetime of meadow tea experience sampled my winter batch and confirmed that it tasted like meadow tea–just very sweet. I know that I am bound by the law of the seasons, so I will take the meadow tea as I can get it. The meadows, after all, are yellow, not green at this time of year.
A local poetess captures the experience of meadow tea far better than I could:
Meadow Tea
Bring a woven basket
Down among the weeds
Where elderberry blossoms
Have turned to purple beads.
Aprons full of emerald cress
Are waiting in the run.
Gather all the square stemmed mint
Silvered in the sun.
Carry home my jewelry–
But stay here first with me
We’ll take the mint into the house
And share some meadow tea.
-Mary Haverstick
Amish Cooking, Pathway Publishing Corporation, Le Grange, Indiana
Haverstick, Mary, Meadow Tea, Pridemark Press, Lancaster PA, 1982.
Heller, Adna Eby, Drinks in Dutchland, The Pennsylvania Dutchman, Vol. 8, No 1, Summer 1956.
Mayer, I. H., Domestic Economy OR How to Make Hard Times Good and Good Times Better, Lancaster , PA, 1893.
Shaner, Richard H., Summer drinks of the Pennsylvania Dutch, Pennsylvania Folklife, Vol. 31, No. 4, Summer 1982.
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