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Comment by phpnode | Hacker News Reader

it's a shame for such a distinguished person to make such an amateur mistake - point 10 is indeed answerable:

1. people who put the milk in first have become adept at adding exactly the right amount of milk to a cup of any size. It's a ubiquitous skill, learnt virtually as soon as the person begins drinking tea in this (proper) way. Orwell was clearly inexperienced.

2. adding the milk last requires simultaneous stirring to correctly assess the tea's consistency. This wasteful and complicated activity is not required when the milk is added first, as the milk is evenly mixed with the tea by the pouring process itself. This saves considerable time.

3. adding the milk to an already boiling cup of tea burns the milk, ruining the flavour of the tea.

However, a true tea lover would never soil their tea by adding milk in the first place.

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The French upper class were the first to popularise the idea of adding milk to tea. This was back in the days of Napoleon and fine china, as in from China, was new too.

The reason for adding the milk first was to protect their finest quality china from cracking due to the heat of the tea (the teapots were metal, e.g pewter around that time too).

So, the origins of the milk first idea are deeply rooted in history. If you are drinking tea in 18th century fine china tea cups handed down from your aristocratic French ancestors, then you might not want to experiment with the tea first technique, however, if you drink tea out of a mug then consider the benefits of tea first.

As for whether 'tea first' needs a stir, the answer is not yes. There are convection currents inside the cup that will stir the milk in for you. A helping stir does help but is not always necessary particularly if the tea has cooled too much.

> 3. adding the milk to an already boiling cup of tea burns the milk, ruining the flavour of the tea.

No. The tea has to infuse in the teapot before pouring. Therefore it is not boiling by the time it gets to the cup and the milk can't be 'ruined'.

Unless you are using tea bags, teabags are an excellent innovation, personally I prefer single cup tea bags, tea made in cup with none of the paraphernalia of the pot. If you want a sharp cup of tea with no bitter taste an average teabag in cup with boiling water and no milk yet will work perfectly. No need for lengthy infusion time, add milk, get colour right, squeeze and remove bag, sharp cuppa made.

Orwell gets it wrong regarding the matter of drawing fresh water. Most water contains things that lead to limescale. It is important to draw fresh water so that limescale does not build up in the kettle. Dissolved oxygen levels is cited by some as important, theoretically you are boiling the oxygen out of the water too much if you reboil rather than draw fresh. This sort of makes sense and 'experts' say it makes sense but I have not tested this myself or seen a scientific paper explaining how this works.

A final detail: unpasteurised, fresh milk. Tea made with this 'forbidden fruit' is far better than when made with normal milk. The difference is hard to describe, but, to give you an idea it is like the difference between listening to traffic noise on the edge of a motorway and listening to Handel's 'Zadok the Priest' being sung by a choir in Westminster Abbey.

One can become just as adept at stirring the correct number of times. Its a ubiquitous skill too.

Also, this myth about 'burning the milk' - I get my latte at 180 degrees, and the milk is not 'scalded' or 'burned' or any other thing - its just fine.

I suppose there is a prescribed direction of stirring?

This depends entirely on which hemisphere said tea-maker is located.

North/South or East/West?

The milk in a latte is typically gradually heated to its temperature, whereas when cold milk is added to hot tea, it changes temperature rapidly. This causes the Maillard Reaction, fundamentally changing its flavour. This is like the difference between cooking a steak at immediately high temperature vs gradually increasing temperature. Same resulting temperature but one is delicious and the other is brown and floppy.

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

That article has a lot of details without actually describing how the reaction is achieved. You say its by rapid heating instead of gradual heating. So a latte is safe. Have to get the word out to barristas nationwide, since I have to explain to every one that nothing bad is going to happen to my latte.

Did you actually read the link you provided? The Maillard reaction doesn't appear to be relevent to milk and tea combining at the sub-boiling temperatures discussed. Unless you have another source that actually supports your statement?

Yes, I read it - I was rather hoping no one else would, it seemed just about plausible enough to be convincing.

Refreshing candor.

This is a religious matter and as such no tactics are off limits. Tea first is wrong.

To make coffee, you need water just below boiling. Commercial brewers are set at about 200 degrees. To make a proper pot of tea, you need boiling water.

It seems, at least according to one double blind study[1], that there's not actually a noticeable difference in taste.

[1]: http://tomstafford.staff.shef.ac.uk/teatastetest/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea

"David Salsburg[5] reports that a colleague of Fisher, H. Fairfield Smith, revealed that in the test, the woman got all eight cups correct.[6] The chance of someone who just guesses getting all correct, assuming she guesses that four had the tea put in first and four the milk, would be only 1 in 70 (the combinations of 8 taken 4 at a time)."

The Sheffield study was inspired by Fisher's early experiment. I don't think a single study performed in 1935 with a single participant provides indisputable proof though, especially given that a later study with 94 participants and more rigorous statistical and experimental methods found no clear difference. It's hard to guess now what factors lead to the lady correctly guessing all 8 cups - perhaps the experiment was poorly designed, perhaps she had exceptional tasting skills, or perhaps it was truly chance (1 in 70 isn't actually exceptionally low odds).

The reason to put in milk afterwards: only then can you marvel at the swirling clouds of milk slowly dissolving in the tea. I don't think extra stirring is necessary. If you are fast enough, there will still be enough motion in the tea from pouring it.

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