The Samovar and the Sugar Lump

The Merchant's Wife, Boris Kustodiev, 1918 (Wikipedia)

From "Flavors of Russia"

Russian people often remember the samovar  as a symbol of their love of tea. A large water-boiler that sat on a table top, a samovar used liquid fuel, charcoal, or (later) electricity to keep hot water ready at any time without using the stove. A small teapot with very concentrated tea would sit atop the samovar. To make a cup of tea, one would take some of the strong tea from the teapot and mix it with the boiling hot water from the larger vessel. Often, a spoonful of jam or a lump of sugar would be added to the cup. A guest might also be offered cakes or fruit with the tea. The samovar became widespread during the 19th century, and continued in popular use throughout the Soviet era up to the present.

From "A Guide to Zavarka," Food & Wine Magazine.

Samovars were useful and also decorative: they could be made of silver, brass, iron, or multi-color enamel. They were a valuable family possession. Russian-Jewish immigrants to the US in the 19th or early 20th century often brought their samovars with them along with precious Sabbath candlesticks and feather beds, used to protect the metal valuables. They thought these would become family heirlooms — but their assimilated American children stopped using them within a generation. Whether the tea came from a samovar or just a tea kettle, the Russians loved to make it sweet. (source)

Poor Jews in Eastern Europe drank tea, but really rich people could enjoy it with many more delicacies. Tevye the dairy man, first the narrator of a number of stories by Sholem Aleichem and later the hero of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" put it this way:

They carried out hot samovars with glasses of tea, sugar and preserves, delicious omelets, fresh, wonderful-smelling butter cakes, and afterward all kinds of food, the most expensive treats, rich, fatty soups, roasts, geese, along with the finest wines and tarts. I stood off to the side and marveled at the way, kayn eyn horeh, the rich folks from Yehupetz eat and drink, God bless them. I’d pawn everything I own, I was thinking, if only I could be rich. The crumbs that fell off their table would have fed my children for a week, at least till Saturday. (Tevye the Dairyman, p. 53)

The Rubaneko Family and their samovar, 1918 (source)

Sometimes Russians drank tea from their saucer to cool it. Other Russian and Russian-Jewish people instead drank their tea from a glass or a tumbler. One customary way to drink tea was with a lump of sugar held between one’s teeth: the sugar melted slowly when one sipped the very hot tea. My father occasionally drank his tea this way (he immigrated from Russia as a boy, but he never had a samovar!) 

A brief memoir by Rachel Naomi Remen describes this:

On Friday afternoon, when I would arrive at my grandfather's house after school the tea would be already set on the kitchen table. My grandfather had his own way of serving tea. There were no tea cups and saucers or bowls of granulated sugar or honey. Instead he would pour the tea directly from the silver samovar into a drinking glass. There had to be a teaspoon in the glass first otherwise the glass, being thin, might break.

My grandfather did not drink his tea in the same way that the parents of my friends did either. He would put a cube of sugar between his teeth and then drink the hot tea straight from his glass. So would I. I much preferred drinking tea this way to the way I had to drink tea at home. (source)

Some Russian tea-drinkers also nibbled the sugar lump while drinking the tea. A quote from War and Peace:

Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a bed that had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the newcomer, who, with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off his wraps with the aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. ... His servant was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache, evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never grown. This active old servant was unpacking the traveler’s canteen and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled a tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to whom he passed it. ... 

The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down, with an unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be wanted. 

This blog post is dedicated to Elizabeth at the blog Altered Book Lover, where each Tuesday many bloggers share memories, photos, or other ideas about a drink, especially tea. I've found this to be a very inspiring theme, that has been leading me to look at a variety of beverages and their cultural contexts in new ways. Blog post © 2020 mae sander, images as credited.