Black tea cake

Tea tablets are blocks of whole or finely ground tea leaves that have been pressed into moulds to form a solid block. These could be made into beverages or eaten as food and we used as a form of currency in China, Tibet and Central Asia in ancient times.
The nomads of Siberia and Mongolia used brick ta as currency until World War II. It was the most commonly produced and used form of tea in ancient China prior to the Ming Dynasty (1644-1911) and while nowadays this form of tablet are less commonly used, some teas like Puerh (aged and fermented) are still commonly found in the pressed form.