An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.

An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.

Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt. The tip is included in Francl’s book “Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea,” published Wednesday by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Not since the Boston Tea Party has mixing tea with salt water roiled the Anglo-American relationship so much.

The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea-lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave.

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The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.”

  • CashewNut 🏴󠁢󠁥󠁧󠁿English
    5•11 months ago

    I’ve never tried it but considering there’s 3 different boil levels for steeping tea called inventively first, second and third boil.

    Also the levels of oxygen in the water can affect the taste of the tea I would hazard a guess that microwaving water will create a fucking cupped abortion.

    A microwave - no matter how clean - will probably imbue the water with ‘extras’. Tea is extremely delicate. I swore I hated tea until one day aged 21yo a friend made me a cup and it turns out I’d been drinking tea wrong the previous 21yrs. It took another 5-6yrs for me to find my preferred tea making method. Everything from the cup to teapot and water hardness level. Whether it has additives in the water and how much. How long to steep for. Each tea can require different steeping times to get the right colour and taste.

    Making GOOD tea right isn’t as easy as people think.