At that time he was trying to market the newly imported hot black Indian tea. Blechynden served the tea cold, and thus has generally credited with inventing iced tea.
The cold ice tea was greatly appreciated by the parched fairgoers and helped to freely advertise his black Indian tea.
In fact, iced tea was available earlier, although Blechynden did bring iced tea to the world’s attention.
Indeed, just a few years after the fair, the author of The Grocer’s Encyclopedia gave his reader a detailed recipe for making iced tea.
The earliest report of iced tea being served dates back to an 1879 cookbook called Housekeeping in Old Virginia in which iced tea was added to a ‘tea punch’.
Cold green tea punch was enjoyed in England at least by the late eighteenth century and appeared in printed Southern books as early as Lettice Bryan’s The Kentucky Housewife (1839).
Invention of iced tea
