Waldensians and their habit of taking Afternoon tea

 Waldensians and their habit of taking Afternoon tea

The Waldensians introduced in their four valleys - and continue to practice today - the English  custom of taking afternoon tea, a result of the historically strong cultural links between England and these Protestant valleys, since the 17th century. This habit is extremely uncommon in other areas of Italy. The Waldensians would not have taken imported Indian tea like the tea-drinking colonial English: the poor Waldensian villagers may have opted for a local substitute such as ‘Veronica Allioni’. This tea – sometimes locally and more recently called Occitan Tea became recently also among the entire Occitan/Provençal community living in the Western Italian Alps one of the distinctive signs of local identity.

For tea, they used of the aerial parts of Veronica (speedwell) species (esp. the local Veronica allionii). Veronica is one of the most beautiful of small Piemontese alpine flowers. The plant was first identified by Dominique Villars, a Piedmontese botanist of the 18th century and illustrated in Flora Pedemontana (1785).  It was medicinally used for expectorants to treat coughs. 

Par Stéphane TASSON — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2868821

In terms of foraged foods, the Northern Alpine cuisine included the very common consumption of the young shoots of the Common Hop (Humulus lupulus) and Meadow Salsify (Tragopogon pratensis) which can be considered a cultural marker of wider Piedmontese cuisine - as reported nearly one century ago by Giovanni Mattirolo in his review of the wild plants of Piedmont [32]. 

It appears that the practice of gathering and consuming the leaves/young shoots of Lamb’s Lettuce (Valerianella locusta),  parts of the  Rampion (Phyteuma), Bistort (Persicaria bistorta) and Goat’s Beard (Aruncus dioicus) continued only until the recent past but are  less common today in the Valleys. The latter three represent an important part of the slowly disappearing North Italian Alpine culinary tradition. Bistort was used for puddings in Lent in England and for soups in Italy. In Italy the young shoots of Goat’s Beard are eaten, usually boiled briefly in herb infused water, and then cooked with eggs and cheese.

In the Waldensian Valleys, Tansy (which is called ‘Arquebus wort’ in Piemontese) has been used as a crucial seasoning ingredient in omelettes, soups, and for a home-made liqueur called arquebuse. In fact, Tansy has a long history of folk use in Britain too - especially in omelettes consumed during the fish-based diet of Lent. 

Waldensians, even in the poorest villages, have maintained for many centuries intense cultural ties to Britain, due to the historical and theological proximity between the Protestant/Anglican and Waldensian faiths.