As you may already know, the title of Britain’s Best Loaf 2025 was awarded to a brioche that was flavoured with lemon curd and earl grey tea. The inventor – Miyo Aoetsu, who runs a baking business from her home in Derbyshire – says the loaf was inspired by a recent Japanese trend for foods that combine the flavours of lemon and earl grey. But outside Japan, how many recipes can there be that use earl grey as an ingredient? Here are 17, just for starters.
The first, and most basic, is for earl grey itself. The connection between the tea and the 2nd Earl Grey, in whose honour it is sometimes said to have been concocted, is sketchy and possibly nonexistent. There is no official formula or authoritative version; it’s just a name given to black tea flavoured with bergamot, a type of bitter orange grown extensively in Calabria. Making your own is as simple as leaving some dried bergamot peel in a jar of black tea for a bit. The result will probably be a bit more subtle than store-bought – which usually contains oil of bergamot – but you may even prefer it.
