[tea] Douglas Adam’s Guide to making a good cup of tea … ‘The socially correct way of pouring tea is to put the milk in after the tea. Social correctness has traditionally had nothing whatever to do with reason, logic or physics. In fact, in England it is generally considered socially incorrect to know stuff or think about things. It’s worth bearing this in mind when visiting.’ [thanks Stu]
Douglas Adams Guide to making Tea
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2004 at 11:47 am and is filed under Books, Drink.
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Top marks to you for linking to these two great articles on tea making. People laugh about this kind of thing, but I read both articles a couple of years ago and it genuinely did lead to much, much nicer tasting tea! The key thing appears to be the part about using only boil*ing* water. I would disagree with Mr Orwell on China teas though. Yunnan tea (Twinings especially) is particularly fine, and is best with milk. I’m off to put the kettle on …
Different people seem to have different opinions on tea-pouring etiquette. I remember a tv program about the making of Upstairs Downstairs that claimed servants would make their tea with milk put in first to avoid shattering their cheaper mugs. On the other hand, the expensive china mugs used by the nobs were able to withstand the rapid heating so they poured the hot tea in first (presumably so that they could judge how much milk they wanted more easily). According to Douglas Adams’ milk-scalding theory, this probably means that the “downstairs” tea tasted better.
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