Cream Tea at Stowe Gardens, National Trust, Buckinghamshire

After the second mouthful of this wonderful cream tea I remarked to Mrs Countrycreamtea that I was speechless, to which her reply was that she has always been grateful for small mercies.  Such are the down to earth moments that sometimes accompany a life changing experience.  If there were any readers of this blog they would of course know that I am not given to overstatements of any kind whatsoever. And so I can sincerely avow that this was one of the greatest cream teas ever.

Stowe Gardens (the NT doesn't own the house - it's an educational establishment) are absolutely wonderful.  The grounds are vast and are littered with innumerable architectural ornaments.  These additions are sometimes absurd but almost never inappropriate.  It is a quite wonderful place.

But what about the cream tea?

Location 9/10
The tea room stands adjacent to one of the largest architectural additions to Stowe Gardens.  Those fluted Ionic columns are quite something aren't they?  This temple is dedicated to Concord and Victory.  How wonderful to enjoy a winning cream tea right in its very shadow.  This is a very great place, but....

.... a prefab is a prefab so one point lost here I'm afraid.

The scone 19.5/20

19.5 out of twenty is a very great score but this pair of beauties is worth every single half point awarded.  There's a real skilful carefree element that's visible here.  The cook here is to scones what Eric Cantona was to football.  Brilliant, talented, on the money, but always unpredictable.  Here you see it by the way in which the baking powder has worked in different ways.  On the left the near rupture is horizontal - smack through the middle at the same trajectory as that through which the knife passes;  on the right it is across the top of the crown of a scone that has behaved quite differently,  here it's like an out of control toadstool that's risen perfectly upright with only the slightest hint of listing.
Before going on to discuss the taste I must draw your attention to that little raisin that's visible on the right side of the right scone.  It's like a precocious young talent that's endeavored to break  free from the shackles of classical form while knowing that to break entirely free might be its ruin.  A raisin trapped at the very edge of the frying pan looking over into the fire so to speak.  To remain might mean being trapped into the bourgeois world of a fat cream tea reviewer, but to leap might mean never having one's talents acknowledged.  All this meaning guided by the gifted hands of a master baker.  Quite astonishing.
As its score bears witness, this is a great tasting scone.  Unsweetened, perfectly salted, freshly baked, and brushed almost carelessly by a rich egg/milkwash.  Quite fabulous.


The Cream 8/10
Clotted, cold (but not too cold), spot on.

The Jam 8/10
I normally find it impossible to give these horrible little jars more than 7.  The cheeky little variation here is that, knowing that one hopeless little jar couldn't possible be enough for two generous scones, I went back to ask for a second jar, for which I wasn't charged.  Now I realise this might sound penny pinching and terribly Hyacinth Bucketish,  but that's the sort of generous gesture that appeals - as if I've passed a little test posed me by the descendants of Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville.

The Tea 10/10
Vast amounts of it - hot until the fourth and last cup. Brilliant.


Service and Miscellaneous. 10/10
This place was very busy but the kitchen maids were all over it like tramps on chips. And despite the busyness the tables didn't look like those found at a Burger King in a London Terminus at rush hour.  See also Jam above.

Value for money. 20/20.
This premier cream tea came with change from a blue drinks voucher.

Prejudice corner. 9/10

1) Is the local MP a Liberal Democrat.
This question rents me in two.  No he isn't and so in a sense the answer is simple and one point is scored:  the rules are, after all, the rules.  This point, however, has to be one of the most grudgingly bestowed points in the unillustrious history of www.countrycreamtea.blogspot.com.

2) In a place so dominated by classical architecture, was there any room made available for the one true catholic church of England?
Yes there was - two churches on the one site without a den of non-conformist vice anywhere in sight. 1 point.

3) You've mentioned how busy it was.  But was it popular?
You're quite right in alluding to the fact that countrycreamtea abhors popularity.  Well attended, however, doesn't necessarily mean popular - so one carefully scored point awarded.

4) What about coffee?  I know it was popular in the 18th century but since tea is tea, and since Buckinghamshire, the last time I looked, was still in England, was any quarter given to tea-scorning bean deviants?
Not a bit of it.  In actual fact I couldn't help but notice that Latte and Cappuccino were both off for the afternoon - and no I didn't sabotage the milk steamer.  1 point.

5) On approaching the scone counter, how were you addressed?
A particularly appropriate question.  The other day, in a public house in Oxfordshire the cellarman addressed me as mate.  Now it's not as if I want, or deserve if the truth be told, to be addressed as Sir or anything, but I am driven to distraction by such faux-chumminess.  But this, mercifully, tends not to happen in cream tea houses.  No doubt it soon will, but for the time being 1 point scored.

6) To facilitate your visit was there a mobile food buggy offering snacks and drinks out and about?
Though I didn't see such a worthless caravanserai on my visit the prospectus tells me it is there.  No points here.

7) I'm told this place was extremely popular at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries.  Please don't tell me it was crawling with repulicans.
Not a bit of it.  Members of many of the great Royal Families of Europe were guests throughout this time - so put your copy of the London Review of Books away and put a point in your pipe and smoke it.

8)  You mention smoking. What of tobacco and snuff?
I'm afraid that since this was such a fine cream tea I wasn't paying much attention to this question.  I'm sure, however, that I saw an elderly gentlemen chugging on a great big cheroot as I entered the establishment. 1 point.

9) Vegetarianism?
Certainly not. 1 point

10) Would a reasonable person describe the experience as being trendy?
Certainly not in a place where two of the greatest attractions are buildings such as the Gothic Temple and Monument to British Worthies.  1 point.

Total and Summary 93.5/100
A total score above 75 or so is a cream tea worthy of travel.  A score of above 90 denotes the sublime.  This was sublime.  One of the great places of England served by a suitably great cream tea. Fantastic.