My father, who was a chemist, always insisted on pouring his tea from the teapot into a cup that already had its milk in it saying that the chemical reactions between the tea and the milk happened differently that way round to if you add the milk to the tea & that it tasted different the other way round.
I know a little about equilibrium reactions and so on, but I can’t see that it would make that much difference (tea at 80 degrees C plus tiny bit of milk at 5 degrees C or vice versa, the temp will balance out very quickly and if the end reaction products aren’t stable, then the compounds will shift anyway).
I did a little web browse on tea and milk & all I could find were sites saying “you can serve tea with lemon or milk, but not both because the lemon curdles the milk” - not exactly the tea equivalent of rocket science!
I can’t speak to the chemistry involved, but there is some physics to be considered.
The very old, genteel tradition of pouring the milk before the tea – I was told – is to prevent “scalding” the cup.
What does this mean exactly? My theory is that pouring hot, hot liquid on a relatively fragile, cold porcelain tea cup probably (?) did not actually damage the cup, but maybe did crack the glazing. Glazing is a very thin coating of glass baked on outside of some ceramics. If it cracks, the cup (or other ceramic vessle) is still good, but it doesn’t look as nice anymore.
GOOD tea doesn’t NEED milk or sugar in it. Tell you dad to throw out his teabags and get a strainer and some good leaf tea. He’ll never want to go near milk or sugar again.
I’d always heard the opposite of what stuyguy said. “Genteel” people put the tea in first to avoid scalding the MILK. (If you’ve ever tasted boiled milk, you know it has a different flavor.)
I’ll have to track down a source, but I think there was actually a phrase “milk in first” used to indicate that someone was less than refined.
Personally, I’m with Eve, though. Let my tea alone.
I don’t usually add milk to tea, but I always have milk in my coffee, and I always add the milk first. I swear to God it tastes different that way. I have no proof to back me up, but somehow it seems to mix better or something if you add a little milk to the bottom of the cup, then add the coffee.
i put the milk in before the tea because its actually easier for me to judge how much milk is “just right”…plus a lot of times im just too lazy to get a spoon to stir it all up and that helps mix things up a bit
I presume up to this point we’ve been talking about hot (bleech!) tea.
I, ice tea (yeah, that’s how it’s pronounced down hyar) drinker extraordinaire, first started (as a small chap) drinking ice tea with milk, specifically canned “evaporated” milk.
It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I started drinking ice tea “straight up.”
I can’t discuss the chemistry of the situation knowledgeably, but I think the tea-in-first and milk-in-first methods certainly produce different-tasting end results. I agree with your father that milk-in-first is preferable. In fact, I’d rather skip the milk than drink tea-in-first.
Chocolate milk and hot cocoa mixes can also be sensitive to the way they are mixed. Adding a little milk or water to the cocoa, then stirring thoroughly before adding the rest of the liquid seems (in my experience, anyway) to make a stronger-tasting drink.
WAG: Maybe the difference has something to do with the fact that milk isn’t a chemical solution. It’s a mixture of water and tiny droplets of milk solids. Similarly, hot cocoa and chocolate milk aren’t solutions, but mixtures. If the tiny particles of milk, chocolate, or whatever clump together, they’ll have less total surface area, and probably less taste. If they tend to separate, they’ll have more total surface area, and maybe more taste. Maybe the more gradual heating of the milk in the milk-in-first method effects the average milk-particle-clump size, and thus the taste of the final cup.
In ancient times,which nowadays means any year before 1950,the milk/cream was in the cup before the hot tea was poured because some fine china could not absorb the shock of extreme heat without cracking.
In other societies this problem was overcome by having a spoon in the cup to quickly absorb extreme heats.
Modern china isn’t as delicate.
The practice wasn’t common among the ordinary folk because fine china wasn’t one of their their problems.
However,so many of them were “in service” that they picked up the practice and carried it on------sometimes as an affectation.
I have heard dozens of reasons for putting the milk in first, the only one with conclusive evidence is, it stops the tannin staining your cup/mug/pint.
When initially making the tea however, the brew should be just tea leaves/bags and boiling water in a warmed receptacle.
My mother went to a good school, and was an expert on good manners. I know this was true because she told me so. She said well-brought up people put their tea in first.
My wife’s mother went to a different good school and was an expert on good manners. I know this was true because she told me so. She said well-brought up people put the milk in first.
I went to a good school, and I am an expert on good manners. I know this is true and I tell you so. As the Master Kǒng said, “He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man. Follow him”.
I say, it does not matter a damn which way you make your cup of tea, so long as you like it that way. I have spoken.
60-million people aren’t wrong. You’ve clearly never had a good cuppa. I can say objectively and without doubt that there is not anything better in this world, and the fact that such a thing is unobtainable in the US is the thing I dread most about my visits there.
A good cuppa is the liquid of the Gods. Anyone who claims otherwise has never had one.
Is it totally unavailable? I was just thinking the other day that I wanted a quality cup of tea like I had when I visited the UK but didn’t know where to start, there have to be tea brands that are sold on both sides of the Atlantic.
Edit: Actually this is probably best in a whole separate thread. Off to Cafe Society to start one.
Well it might not be totally unavailable, but being a visitor to your country I haven’t the faintest idea where to look. Plus I’m in hotels, not my own home. There’s a “Liptons” thing, but I don’t like that; plus your milk tastes different.
I’ve personally never had a real cuppa in the US. Not saying nobody has, ever.
But when you talk of tea without milk, or green tea, or iced tea, they might have the word “tea” in common but they are utterly different drinks to a good cuppa. You might as well be comparing beer and coffee.
I’m an American tea geek who has lived in London for a short period of time. American teabags are swill, not fit for cleaning your toilet. However, I found it easier to find loose-leaf in the US than in London. Most American supermarkets that I’ve been to will at least have low-end loose-leaf but in London I had to go to the boutiques.
Most of the major British supermarkets sell loose-leaf tea. Not with a very wide range but they’ll have Twinings and usually one or two other loose-leaf brands.
Incidentally tea obviously has to have milk in it… Unless you’re talking really special stuff (the tea they have on site on the tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia didn’t need milk, but regular loose-leaf tea isn’t of that quality).
I don’t think a “British cuppa” is generally very hard to make though: just boil a kettle, add any decent breakfast teabag (I seem to remember you guys have Lipton’s yellow label over there which I’m always fine with; British cuppas often use brands like Tetleys which aren’t exactly delicacies anyway) to a coffee mug, add fresh semi-skimmed milk, stir. You need more milk than you’d put in a coffee; it should be light enough that people can tell it’s not coffee by sight alone. Add sugar if you want. Done.
