The biggest British-American tea row since… Well, you know
Can a simple cup of tea spark a dispute between two powerful countries on opposite sides of the Atlantic? Just ask the group of patriots who crudely disguised themselves and threw crates of tea into Boston Harbor.
For a new book, an academic has looked at articles and texts spanning more than 1,000 years to try to determine the best way to make a cup of tea.
The conclusions of this author, Michelle Francl, professor of chemistry at Bryn Mawr College, include the expected (use tea bags only once) and the interesting (add warm milk after pouring the tea to prevent curdling).
But at least one of the recommendations was inflammatory. Professor Francl advised adding a pinch of salt. Salty!
The theory is that sodium makes the tea less bitter.
Again, in case you missed it: salt. In your tea.
Professor Francl hastens to say that she does not put a shaker in every cup. The main reason for adding salt is that it can save tea if the bag has been in water for too long. “The sodium blocks the bitter receptors,” she said. “The tea tastes softer and less bitter.” She recommends adding just a pinch: “so little that you can't taste the saltiness.”
In her argument, Professor Francl noted that Lu Yu's Book of Tea from the eighth century AD suggested the routine addition of salt.
Professor Francl used her research for the book: “Infused: The Chemistry of Tea“, serious. She could read manuscripts dating back to the time of Christ. When opinions conflicted, as was often the case, she turned to “the preponderance of the weight of the evidence.” And she also “definitely tried things, much to the amusement of my family.”
For example, she used temperature sensors to see whether it really matters whether you heat the pot. (It does.)
The unconventionality of her advice on salt caused a stir, let's say, especially in Britain, a country where tea drinking is deeply rooted. And some of the attention inevitably turned to the author's nationality: American.
There is a lurking suspicion on Scepter Island that, like Yorkshire pudding and Branston Pickle, Americans simply don't get tea.
“The British say we don't know what we are doing,” said Professor Francl. And what has her research yielded? “We don't know what we're doing.”
“I have a hard time getting a good cup of coffee in a restaurant,” she said ruefully.
Ted Lasso, the fish-out-of-water American sitcom character trying to find his way in the quintessentially British football world, said: “Tea is terrible. Absolutely dirty water.” So can an American teach the British about tea?
Maybe not if that lesson also contains salt. 'Good Morning Britain', the ITV news programme, said that adding salt to tea 'feels like a crime'. The Daily Mail headline claimed that the suggestion 'brought the British to a boiling point'.
In the interests of transatlantic harmony, it is worth noting that Professor Francl's book was published by the British-based Royal Society of Chemistry.
Maybe not since The New York Times urged readers to put peas in their guacamole has a food recommendation that evokes such hackles.
Of course, salt in tea isn't completely unheard of. Tibetan butter tea including saltFor example.
Is this all a, well, storm in a teapot? Hardly. None other than the American embassy in London made a statement about the issue. In a seemingly ironic tone it said: 'We cannot stand idly by as such an outrageous proposal threatens the very foundation of our special relationship.'
And it confirmed “that the unthinkable idea of adding salt to Britain's national drink is not an official policy of the United States. And that will never be the case.”
The anonymous author of the statement couldn't resist adding: “The US Embassy will continue to make tea the right way – by microwaving it.”
Although the embassy is (probably) joking about the latter, it's not the best idea. Professor Francl even said that if she could reduce her many tips about tea to just two, one would be: don't heat the water in the microwave.
“A white film may form,” she said. “Tea foam, like the foam in your bathtub, which makes a less fragrant and less tasty cup of tea.”
But it's not too late to save even a disaster like bawdy tea. “A little lemon will get rid of it,” she advised.
Her second important tip is to dip your tea bag up and down. “Better contact between the solvent and the tea leaves,” she said. (The solvent is the water, for non-chemistry students.)
Professor Francl doesn't spend all her time on a cauldron. Her work also includes research into the structure of molecules that 'misbehave', for example by tying themselves into knots or taking the shape of a Möbius strip. Such misbehaving molecules can appear in interstellar space.
But not in a pot of tea.