As early as more than 2,000 years ago, there was a famous sentence in Qu Yuan's Lisao, which read: "Drink Mulan in the morning and watch Qiuju in the evening." During the Tang Dynasty, it was popular for the royal family to eat flowers. According to Lu Yu's Tea Classic, when cooking tea in the Tang Dynasty, dogwood, onion, ginger, jujube and orange peel were added to cook tea. There are also two materials here, the whole poem of Tang Dynasty (884 volumes), and Li Ying's poem "Rewarding Friends to Send Fragrant Camellia in the Spring Festival Evening" says: "Yesterday, the east wind blew bitter orange blossoms, and the Spring Festival Evening wine woke up a cup of tea. Like a cloud to protect you, like snow to separate your hometown. Golden cakes are used as rain dew, and jade dust is used to fry misty clouds. If you are sick, you are thirsty for the whole school, and you are not jealous of the white-necked crow. " In the Tang Dynasty, Han Wo's poem "Hengtang" said, "Shu paper and musk coal add rhyme, and ou rhinoceros liquid makes tea more fragrant." The rhinoceros liquid here, according to the comments of later generations, should refer to the boiled water of osmanthus, or the marinade of pickled osmanthus. These may be the earliest records about scented tea, but we can't know the actual production of scented tea from the poems, so we can't judge whether it is scented tea or mixed scented tea or boiled tea or something else. But from a broader perspective, these can be regarded as the source of attracting flowers into tea and benefiting tea fragrance.
Cai Xiang, a poet after the Song Dynasty, recorded in the Book of Tea that in the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, "tea was really fragrant, and the tribute was made with borneol and ointment to help the smell". It can be seen that at that time, in order to increase the aroma of tribute tea, the precious spice "borneol incense" was mixed. Huang Tingjian, one of the "Four Bachelor of Sumen", is a tea taster who is in favor of using spices in tea. In "Jane Fu Cha", he advocated that "the taste of tea should not be removed, but the goodness of grass and stone should be helped", which is entirely possible. The so-called "good grass and good stone", he specifically listed "walnuts, pine nuts, temples, duck feet, mint, weeds, stachys, chamomile". These eight things are fruits, leaves, seeds and pistils of plants, either cold or spicy, or sweet or fragrant. Choose one or two kinds and use them in moderation to "enhance fragrance and enrich customers" ("Fried Tea Fu"). Why not? It can be seen that in the Northern Song Dynasty, flower petals (such as chamomile) appeared in tea. During the Song and Jin Dynasties, the flowers of Daphne odora in Phnom Penh were often dried, crushed and mixed with tea (and wine). There are many words praising Daphne as evidence: "The fragrance flies to the depth of the jade cup" (Zhang Songlun's "Xijiang Moon"), "Adding Spring Flowers to a Bright Bowl" (Jiangchengzi Slow in the Song Dynasty of Jin Cai) and so on. Song Jin's way of drinking tea is just to temporarily add "good grass and stones" to tea soup. If this kind of tea is called "scented tea", it is not bad. The word "scented tea" here is broad. But the way to help tea at this time is the first sound of making scented tea later.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, Chen Jingyi's "All Fragrances are Ancestors" said: "Jasmine tea and making tea are particularly fragrant". Hu's "Xie Tiao Chapter" records: "When visiting flowers, pick half of them with fragrance, measure the amount of tea, and pick flowers as the side ...". Wu Renshi Yue also talked about "playing fragrant flavor and baking in spring" in "Walking on the Moon and Singing Jasmine". It can be seen that it is very common to smoke tea with jasmine in Song Dynasty, but there is no more specific record of the smoking process.