Lady tasting tea(en.wikipedia.org) |
Lady tasting tea(en.wikipedia.org) |
https://www.vahdam.com/blogs/tea-us/milk-first-or-last-the-s...
I didn't realise it was a class marker until someone described it as "a bit MBT" (milk before tea.)
Apparently where they were from this subtle social shading really mattered.
My mum was half Manc and half Devonian (to one gen) and my dad is half Irish and half North Hants to one gen. I can easily claim all UK nationalities within two generations and German within four. Cornwall, 14th gen via mum, Padstow. I've got the lot!
In reality, you end up with a tea pot going cold with stewed tea in it and you wack some milk and tea in a cup.
Get a grip and drink tea and stop pontificating about the stuff. Its just tea. Yummy!
I am genuinely curious because this seems to be a near-universal thing in Britain, and I just... don't get it.
However, I do wonder whether some people are confused and think milk first means the teabag goes into the milk. This would explain why some people seem inexplicably horrified by it.
> The null hypothesis is that the subject has no ability to distinguish the teas
Since the hypothesis was invalidated, we can begin investigating _how_ she's able to distinguish it, which is what you're getting at.
I was alway told the milk-last 'scalds' the milk, and I do prefer the taste of milk-first, especially with the first pour of the pot.
If making teabag tea, it's better to let the tea brew (and cool) for a few minutes before adding milk. Adding the milk just after the water gives a terrible cup.
Id anything I would think there should be more caramelization in the TBM case because there should be more heat in the larger volume of tea and so the milk should get hotter at the point of initial contact.
Important to realize though, that failure to categorize all 8 doesn't prove anything either. It just means this one experiment isn't conclusive in itself (at 95% confidence).
It's good to be aware of how easy it can be to get a false result by chance, but it's imo a worse statistical sin to propose that not proving something is proving the opposite (a mistake I see quite often).
:)
Lady: is right
this is because of the fear that boiling water will crack your best tea cups?
>Good tea cups would never crack from boiling water
That's sort of the point OP was making, I think. Poor folks wouldn't be able to afford good quality tea cups?
The power of being able to put an objective answer on any personal claim (e.g. mint gives me a headache) with statistics & a blind design is a very powerful tool to approach fields where our science just isn't good yet (psychology, health, etc).
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
... one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.
If you were concerned about regulating the amount of milk you were adding, tea first wouldn't even be a possibility.
If you're concerned about regulating the tea (to water) to milk ratio, i.e., obtaining a reliable flavour), milk first wouldn't even be a possibility.
Drinking vessels come in all different sizes, from dainty little tea cups to mugs that hold an entire litre.
Measuring the milk requires both measuring the steep time exactly, and using a separate measuring cup. This wastes time and adds unnecessary cleanup.
Stirring as you add milk to the tea allows you to tell exactly the right amount for that cup (and for how long the tea was steeped) based on the colour of the beverage.
I have also heard that this is a different way with 6 cups. This matters because 6C3 = 6! / (3!(6-3)!) = 20. That 1/20 chance of getting all 3 cups right is said to be the basis for the 5% significance cutoff for p values.
Another basis for the 5% cutoff is the (even earlier) Poisson distribution, with zero expected events, 3 observed. In this case, the probability of occurrence by chance is 1/e^3, which is just under 5%. In other words, the 5% p value is analogous to “3 strikes you’re out” because the probability of 3 uncommon events or exceptions is <5%.
I'd rather just plain tea than water tea + milk, it just seems the worst of both worlds to me.
That's terrifying.
For example Kashmiri noon chai is tea boiled in milk for about an hour with baking soda before adding ice. It is then aerated by pouring between cups to make it slightly foamy.
Also several cultures around the world do that pretty commonly.
The lady's claim was (allegedly) that she has a perfect ability to distinguish between the tea-milk orders, so in that case even a single failure is indeed enough to reject her claim.
We can't rule out her success rate being significantly greater than 50-50, but even a single failure puts some bounds on her maximum success rate.
I believe you added the word "perfect" which makes a substantive difference. I think this highlights the complications that get involved when trying to turn a simple proposition into an meaningful claim:
- Can we prove that person X can observe taste of tea with > 50% reliability with 95% confidence (what Fischer did)
- Can we prove that person X can observe taste of tea with 100% reliability with 95% confidence (not statistically possible)
- Can we prove that person X cannot observe taste of tea with > 50% reliability with 95% confidence (only possible if this person guesses wrong more often than randomly)
- Can we prove that person X cannot observe taste of tea with 100% reliability with 95% confidence (just need one example)
Once the locations of the four tea-first cups are decided, the locations of the remaining milk-first cups are completely determined. (And there are 8 slots for those first 4 cups, hence 8 choose 4).
It also binds with some other compounds making them less active too, but the astringency is an easy point to understand.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/mb1tku/tempering_astri...
But is said to still be a class marker.
Most people use their teacups more than once.
Even among people who don't, disposable cups, having been mass-produced, are all the same size.
Further the milk first method cannot account for differences in tea strength across brewings.
If we take the amount of times/chances milk first could lead you astray vs. the amount of times tea first plus stirring as you pour could lead you astray, the former is oviously greater and more likely.
I saw somewhere here somebody talking about the different ways the milk sugars might caramelise with the two methods being a factor, and obviously the article suggests there is a difference between the two methods in terms of flavour, but in terms of reliability of flavour, the latter option is obviously more reliable.
I take my tea black and unsweetened anyway, unless I'm drinking Hong Kong style milk-tea that is... then all bets on my blood-sugar levels are off...
> measure a specific amount of milk in isolation than to eyeball how much of it you've just added to something else
Think of it as the difference between measuring a liquid in a container and eyeballing a liquid in another liquid.
I visited a fascinating museum with a ceramics collection, and it included an exhibit with a history of ceramics. Earlier ceramics had this problem. Apparently, bone china -- with some bone mixed in -- created a tougher material that was less prone to cracking under the rapid temperature shock. As ceramics improved over the decades, it became a non-issue.
I suspect that letting the heat spread out over a larger area at the bottom of the cup might have alleviated cracking. That's a speculation of course.
I wonder if this is why the Russians drank tea from glasses. My mom has some lovely Russian tea glasses with silver holders.
When you pour hot tea into an empty cup, the innermost layer of the cup goes from room temp to ~80C within a fraction of a second.
When you pour hot tea into a cup that already contains a fair amount of milk, it goes from $milkTemp to ~60C gradually over a few seconds as the tea mixes with the milk, giving enough time for the cup to expand evenly.
Also, mass manufacturing was in its infancy.