Uh, pass the salt, please

Making the perfect cuppa. American chemist applies a scientific approach to a religious challenge. Paging Rebecca Holden and Terry Freedman!

Salt Shaker Title QS:P1476,En:"Salt Shaker ". Cleveland Museum of Art. Accessed January 25, 2024. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gorham_Manufacturing_Company_(American,_founded_1831)_-_Salt_Shaker_-_2009.368.1_-_Cleveland_Museum_of_Art.jpg. Rights: Public domain.

I am not a tea drinker I should say at the outset, but I have watched two of my favorite writers dissect and dispute the making of tea.¹

Rebecca Holden

and

Terry Freedman

both drink tea — perhaps drinking it is even required where they live — but they differ — vehemently! — in the process of preparing their “cuppa.” You can read about their approaches in their chortlesome letter exchanges, since the tea dispute has regularly surfaced there: Terry’s letters and Rebecca’s.

I wanted to offer Rebecca and Terry some very recent, American-made, and scrupulously researched advice. It might even be just the thing to tame the turbulent tea-brown waters of their discontent. More about the new American solution to the tea dispute after I lay out some of the tea-making schism of Rebecca and Terry.

To bag or not to bag. That is but one of the questions.

I have “virtually steamed open” their letters (as Terry regularly observes), and so I have picked up some of the secret language and the cultish methods of making tea. At least I’ve gathered enough to see that Rebecca and Terry are not members of the same tea cult.

Some inner-circle vocabulary: “WT0,” for example, Rebecca let slip in a footnote in an early letter that mentions tea. But, in a reminiscence of her early tea-drinking and -making years, she let loose that “WT1” was lingo from at least her tea catechism. There, too, “WT2” came up, so I was made aware of some sort of highly technical system.

Rebecca uses tea bags — ones that bear British marks and are different from, say, the German tea bags. “Reader, there is no such thing as an under-accessorised German tea bag,” she recalled from her experience in Germany, “no self-respecting one would ever be out in public without its neatly dangling string and tag.”

Terry faints at the thought of a bag and likely would be apoplectic to see a string and tag. He calls upon environmental science and exacting measurement (enforced, no doubt, by the EU’s Tea Leaf Enforcement Brigade) to defend his choice to use tea leaves sans bags:

The leaves of the tea I drink are individually crafted to ensure they meet EU regulations of length, width and curvature. As for tea bags, you do realise they’re non-compostable, right? You are aware, Rebecca, that it’s people like you who are ruining the environment? I’ve met your sort before.

Terry let slip that even the judgment of proper brewing has a scientific method. No lips need touch the cup, either, so the test is suitable for guests. You use your spoon, and perhaps a harmonica or a nearby piano “I always tap the side of the cup with a spoon,” Terry let slip in one congenial letter to Rebecca. “If it has brewed properly then we should hear a lovely pure tone. I think it’s Middle C.”

I have learned that the disagreements between Terry and Rebecca have become so tense, that they’ve compared tea mugs. Size matters, apparently, and judging from a photo Terry provided In March 2023, he wins. (How he coaxes “Middle C” from his tuba-sized cup, I don’t know.)

In September last year, Terry finally had enough of the balderdash-y persiflage of their tea exchanges. At that point, he spelled the Church of Terry’s True Method of Making Tea. It involves a wait of exactly two-minutes-and-fourteen-seconds after the water boils in his very special kettle.

Like I said, this is scientific and quite precise.

Science to the rescue

And so, this morning I was especially interested to learn of a new tea-making ingredient proposed by Bryn Mawr chemistry professor Michelle Francl. The ingredient? Salt … but just a pinch. She said it smooths the brew, but shouldn’t be used to excess so as to flavor the tea. Just a pinch, she says — “so little that you can’t taste the saltiness of it.”

Professor Francl has written it all up in a book, too. I hope that Rebecca and Terry might use it to bridge the schism they’re suffering from, or perhaps they could found a salty cult of tea-making together!

I’ve not read the professor’s book, but perhaps Terry can review it? Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea is a product of the Royal Society of Chemistry, so there must be something truly British about it.

The study apparently is interdisciplinary, so even the humanities figured into Professor Francl’s work. She also did field work at her kitchen table, it seems. The New York Times reports, “She was able to read manuscripts from as far back as the time of Christ. When advice conflicted, as it often did, she turned to ‘the preponderance of the weight of the evidence.’ And she also ‘definitely tried stuff, much to the amusement of my family.’ ”

But adding salt to tea might be just too much stress to place on Anglo-American relations. More salt in the wound than in the tea, I guess. A harried US ambassador quickly issued a statement to quell the scandal. The full “important statement on the latest tea controversy” (January 24, 2024) appears below:

Please note that they use the microwave to make tea at the US embassy, but (alas, Terry) there was no mention of a two-minute-and-some wait after boiling.

It’s likely the case that diplomatic waters between the UK and US have been muddied to a weak-tea color. That kind of break-up is too much to heal with a pinch of salt.

But I ask Terry and Rebecca: “Can a pinch of salt bring the bags and the leaves together in sweet harmony?”

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Got a comment?

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Tags: tea, us embassy, salt, chemistry, cuppa, rebecca holden, terry freedman

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Links, cited and not, some just interesting

Mather, Victor. “The Biggest British-American Tea Kerfuffle Since … Well, You Know.” The New York Times, January 24, 2024, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/world/europe/perfect-tea-us-uk.html.

Bhattacharya, Suryatapa. “Putting Salt in Your Tea? U.S. Scientist Stirs a Bitter Diplomatic Debate With the U.K.” MSN, January 25, 2024. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putting-salt-in-your-tea-us-scientist-stirs-a-bitter-diplomatic-debate-with-the-uk/ar-BB1hfFyE.

1. But, really, does one make tea? That seems too base a verb for such a lofty practice, but I hope Rebecca and Terry would forgive me if my verb is off. Then, again, given their religious fervor in matters of tea making, I might have altogether too grossly offended to say one makes tea.