Afternoon Tea or High Tea?

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A hotel I visit sometimes is currently advertising a 'High Tea' for Mother's Day. The menu is sandwiches, quiche, scones and cakes. But that's not 'High Tea' is it? That is an 'Afternoon Tea'. A high tea where I come from is a late afternoon meal like a 'proper' dinner - meat, veg, potatoes etc. of some description.

The hotel do brand themselves as being a bit top tier. It irritates me that they are calling it a 'High Tea' as if they are being too posh to do an afternoon tea or something. And don't get me started on the whole 'cream tea' debacle!

YANBU - it's afternoon tea - they are unreasonable to call it a high tea.
YABU - it's a high tea/who cares what they are calling it!

It’s afternoon tea, and this irritates me too!

We used to take my Gran out for high tea at a (now closed) local garden centre on a Sunday - scampi/fish & chips/ steak pie followed by massive treacle scones and cakes.

Having been brought up in a home that did high tea, let me break the week down to you...

Mon - Fri: Breakfast, lunch, dinner and often a late supper
Saturday: Breakfast, lunch and high tea
Sunday: Breakfast, dinner and afternoon tea or high tea

Breakfast: 8:00am
Lunch: 1:00pm
Dinner: 7:00pm or 1:00pm on a Sunday
Supper 9:00pm

High tea did not include sandwiches, was usually savoury but not necessarily hot, so could be a cold collation like a ham or egg salad, cheese pie and salad etc, but bread and butter was served with home made jams. Afternoon tea was much sweeter, with finger sandwiches, scones and a cake.

Late suppers were another cup of tea with a slice of cake, often Dundee cake.

Guess whose mother was in service in the 1920s and 1930s...

I've always associated High Tea with Scotland.

This is high tea!

Well, I have heard some people call an afternoon tea (sandwiches, scones and cakes) a cream tea! Obviously (I think!) a cream tea is just the scones with jam and cream.

And then of course it's the whole jam or cream first ... (cream for me as that's like butter and then jam on top). I mean, you don't put jam on your toast and then butter on top of that do you? Weird ...

haha love this! With home churned butter from their own dairy and washed down with lashings of ginger beer. Sounds idyllic!

Thanks everyone! Some great replies and experiences which have been really interesting to read. I love a bit of social history.

I'm half Scottish (my father) so I reckon that's where I have the understanding of high tea - I think it may well be a regional thing. My Dad used to take his Mum to a hotel for high tea back in the day.

I think we are safe to report, based on the replies here, that afternoon tea and high tea are very different and my fancy hotel has it wrong. Shame on them! Perhaps a staff member is following along - I'll let you know if they change their ad!

When you do an internet search for high tea all you get are afternoon tea places. It’s really irritating.

Where’s good for a proper High Tea (presumably only a Scottish / northern thing)?

Has anyone had high tea since 1948?

I can't say I've ever actually eaten High Tea, but in my mind, it's a proper meal, eaten at 5pm ish. The final meal of the day, in place of dinner which would usually be later.

It’s not High Tea unless there’s a buttered toast course!

The Hotel in Callander that someone posted the menu for up thread looks like it has it right!

I wouldn’t consider quiche part of Afternoon Tea.
During Covid my Mum had Afternoon Tea delivered for 2 special occasions from 2 different 5 star hotels in our city - a lovely treat and it helped the business / staff.
Neither served quiche and never do. It’s always sandwiches, scones and the most fabulous individual cakes.

Yes its proper main meal followed by cakes and scones. Not really something you'd serve up at home.

Thank you, I see what you mean. Where I live in Ireland the term cream tea isn’t really used though. It’s just tea and scones (scone to rhyme with cone obviously😉)

There was a whole thread recently about whether the jam or the cream goes first!😁 What I learned from that is that it very much depends on the type of cream used. Clotted cream goes on first, but if you’re using whipped it goes on second. Before you protest…whipped is delicious and clotted wasn’t available where I live until recently. Whipped cream is still the standard served here with scones.

Some people seem to use butter, jam and cream! Now that’s odd 😂

Defo was taken as a treat in the 70s - also Scottish and maybe it was a thing for longer there?
My nana also referred to a “Fish Tea” which was sit down fish and chips served with bread and butter and a cuppa. Glorious.

Yep I always thought High Tea was what Victorian kids and their governess ate, when the parents were going to be eating dinner/supper at 10pm (followed by a ball, probably).

I love a high tea ( Scottish style) . I haven’t had one in years though.

hot meal, such as macaroni and chips, gammon and chips, salad and chips. With toast or bread and butter served alongside, and a pot of tea. Followed by scones, pancakes, slices of banana loaf, or gingerbread (the cake stuff not the hard biscuits) Amazing!

Afternoon tea as I know it in Scotland is served as a pot of tea or coffee & with that a three layered cakes stand , sandwiches on the bottom, little cakes in the middle and scones with cream and jam on the top. A high tea would be a hot meal like haddock or gammon & chips served with a pot of tea or coffee & again 3 layered cake stand but with bread & butter on the bottom, cakes in the middle & scones with cream & jam on the top layer.

Another variation on what is High Tea, from the children's book Henrietta's House published in 1942, but set in about 1910, by Elizabeth Goudge, b 1900. In this story the speaker Mrs Jameson is what might then have been called 'provincial gentry', but it's the same idea of a heartier meal than afternoon tea, served later than afternoon tea, and involving hot savoury dishes alongside sweet things:

"Mrs Jameson, at what time does tea become high tea', asked Henrietta.
"At about six o'clock I think, dear" said Mrs Jameson. "One adds cold ham then, you know, and then as time goes on the tea gets higher and higher and one adds ginger wine and damson cheese and stewed fruit, and sardines if you have any. And then after eight o'clock it isn't high tea any more, but supper, and you fry bacon and eggs".

High tea to me is of the Enid Blyton style, though, while the ham may have been carved by a farmers wife (either Granny o'r Mum,) neither would often have been described as jolly. It could include things like sardines on toast, if I was unlucky.

Afternoon tea is finger sandwiches and dainty cakes.

Cream tea is scones.

I agree. High tea is a hot meal. Afternoon tea is cakes and sandwiches.

Most afternoon teas I’ve had have mini savouries, nicer than just sandwiches.

I'd think of hgh tea as eg ham and chips around 5pm, followed by supper (snack) about 8pm