Forms: 7–9 tach, tatch, 8 tetch, 8–9 tatche, 9 teache, taych, tache. [app. a. obs. or dial. F. tache, têche plate of iron (Godef.), in Walloon tak ‘plaque de fer qu’on applique au fond d’une cheminée’ (Littré), which in F. dictionaries is usually identified with tache, TACHE sb.1)
1. Sugar-boiling. Each pan of the series through which the juice of the sugar-cane is passed in evaporating it; esp. the smallest and last of these, called specifically the striking-tache.
1657. R. Ligon, Barbadoes, 84. The Coppers, in which the Sugar is boyled, of which, the largest is called the Clarifying Copper, and the least, the Tatch. Ibid., 90. To throw in some of the liquor of the next Copper, to keep the tach from burning.
1740. Hist. Jamaica, xii. 321. The least is called the Tach, where it boils longest.
1756. P. Browne, Jamaica, 131. The juice will often begin to granulate in the second tetch.
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, etc., 1202. The term striking is also applied to the act of emptying the teache.
1871. Kingsley, At Last, xi. I flung it, sugar and all, into the tache.
1885. Lock, Workshop Receipts, Ser. IV. 163/2. The earliest and crudest system of evaporation was the ‘copper wall,’ or ‘battery’ of open pans called ‘teaches’ (taches, tayches, &c.).
† 2. Applied to the flat iron pan in which tea-leaves are dried. Obs.
1701. J. Cunningham, in Phil. Trans., XXIII. 1206. The Bing Tea is the second growth in April: and Singlo the last in May and June, both dry’d a little in Tatches or Pans over the Fire.
1802. Nat. Hist., in Ann. Reg., 764/2. Then they [tea leaves] are tatched; this is done by throwing each time about half a catty of leaves into the tatche, and stirring them with the hand twice, the tatche being very hot. [Footnote] Tatche is a flat pan of cast iron.
