When making tea that is. Do you add the milk to the tea? Or the tea to the milk? Whats correct? Why does it matter?

It has to be milk after you have made the tea.

A decent cup of tea should be made with boiling water.

Neither I drink it black, no sugar.

Honestly I wouldn't really know, I'll await the definitive answer.

It's to do with posh-ness.

Back in the day mugs with of poor design and pooring boiling water directly into them would cause them to crack. Milk was added first to lessen the sharp temperature change.

However, china cups didn't suffer from this problem. So to show you had fancy drink recepticles you could recklessly poor the boiling water in first.

Milk to the tea, in my opinion. Makes a far better tasting cuppa.

It no longer matters.

It used to be that ceramics were generally low quality and porous and would sometimes crack from the thermal shock of being hit by piping hot tea, so it was better to add the milk first to buffer the temperature change. Same logic towards heating the pot in advance too. The posher people used "fine bone china" / porcelain teas sets, which is a much higher quality material and fires with little porosity...making it more resistant to breaking and ideal for tea sets.

But now most vessels can cope easily anyway as raw materials are much better understood and controlled.

Sorry...I still suffer some flashbacks to my Undergraduate days studying ceramics.


Flavourwise you could argue that adding very hot tea to milk will cook some of the milk on contact, changing the taste, but I cant see it would make any difference which way you added it, and who serves tea that hot anyway, it wouldnt have had a chance to steep


Personally I add milk to tea...you cant tell how strong the tea in the mug is when there is milk in already, and you cant really guess how much milk to add in advance to get the right colour. But I aint posh, so what do I know (other than about the ceramics thing)

personally I prefer coffee, especially Timmys

Excellent! So not only does it taste better but it shows off the quality of my china (which is made in China).

Seems like there's nothing like a food post to get people talking

I'll go with that. But I like to shake things up every once in a while.

Never if one drinks earl grey tea!

I put the milk in first if i am making it and noone else is looking as I am lazy.

Tea drinkers tell me that this is wrong and the hot water does something horrible to the milk, plus you cant tell "what colour it is".

Oh oh. What about Eral Grey? I just made a cup and I put milk and sugar in it. Was that bad

oh yes, very very bad indeed

lemon only

Go straight to the top of the bad list

Ive been known to enjoy milk in earl grey. But sugar!?, out of the question!

you may have enjoyed it, but you shouldnt have done it!