What to eat with it
Reprocessed tea means jasmine, osmanthus, rose and other scented teas, plus a few pressed novelty shapes.
The scent is the product, and any pairing has to respect it rather than compete with it.
Plain, dry biscuits are the safest answer, because they add crunch and nothing else.
Lightly sweetened steamed buns also work.
Jasmine tea in particular is served in teahouses with melon seeds and very little else.
That is not an accident: salted, roasted seeds are the traditional partner.
Fresh fruit is risky, because acidity fights the floral note.
Pear and apple are the safest fresh options, and citrus is the worst.
Osmanthus scented tea goes with osmanthus jelly, which is the obvious and correct answer.
Rose scented tea is harder to place, and it is best left alone.
Pressed novelty cakes are usually low grade leaf in a shape, so treat them as the base tea rather than the scent.
A jasmine green behaves like a green tea, and a jasmine white behaves like a white.
A 3 g dose of jasmine green at 85 °C gives 3 cups before the scent goes.
Scenting runs in rounds, and 3 rounds is a low grade jasmine while 9 is a high one.
What to avoid
The scent is fragile, and almost everything on a normal table will destroy it.
Chilli, as always, wins.
Strong spice is nearly as bad, and it is common in the cuisines that drink scented tea.
Vinegar strips the floral note in a single bite.
Anything smoked arrives before the tea and stays afterwards.
Strong cheese is far too heavy for what is usually a light base leaf.
Very sweet desserts cancel the scent entirely.
Anything made with butter coats the palate and muffles the aroma.
Mint is fatal, and so is anything mint adjacent such as a strong herbal tea.
Coffee in the same sitting removes the top note for an hour.
Cold food suppresses aroma, and aroma is the entire product here.
Serve plain things, in small amounts, and not many of them.
Two minutes after anything spiced, the top note is still gone.
Anything above 30 per cent sugar cancels the scent outright.
Sweet or savoury
Scented tea reads as sweet to most people, and it usually is not.
Jasmine tea is a green tea underneath, and it contains no sugar at all.
The flowers contribute aroma, and aroma is often mistaken for sweetness.
That confusion is why people put cake beside it and then wonder what happened.
Sweet pairing is possible, but only with dry, plain, low fat things.
A plain biscuit, a plain bun, an unsweetened cracker.
Savoury pairing is the safer default, and it is the traditional one.
Salted seeds, plain nuts and lightly salted tofu are the standard answers.
Salt at a low level sharpens the scent rather than killing it.
Above that level the scent turns soapy.
Texture is the easiest variable to play with, since crunch costs nothing.
Smell the dry leaf before choosing anything, because that is what the food has to live beside.
Salt at 1 per cent sharpens jasmine, and at 2 per cent it turns soapy.
One biscuit per cup is the rate that works.
A simple rule
Pair the base tea first and the scent second.
A jasmine green is a green tea with a top note, and it should be treated as a green tea.
Everything that ruins a green tea ruins this.
The scent then narrows the range further, since it is the first thing to go.
Choose plain, dry, low fat food and stop there.
Contrast is possible through texture and temperature rather than through flavour.
Something crisp and cool beside a hot scented cup is the whole trick.
Serve the tea hot, because the aroma is carried on the steam.
A covered cup or a small pot keeps more of it than a wide bowl does.
If the scent vanishes after one bite, the food was too strong.
If the tea tastes flat, the food was too fatty.
When the scent is still there on the third cup, the pairing is right.
Keep the water at 90 °C, since cooler water carries less scent.
A covered 100 ml cup holds the aroma for about 4 minutes.
Scented tea is judged on aroma, and aroma is the first thing the food can ruin.
Serve the food cool if you want contrast, and at room temperature if you do not.