Milk in your tea?
How did the custom of drinking black tea with milk
begin? When tea first reached Europe, it was not drunk
with milk, I although other things including saffron,
ginger, nutmeg, and salt s were often added. The Dutch,
Europe's first tea drinkers from the 1630s on, did
not in the beginning use milk. Garway's 1660 Eondon
I broadsheet, however, declares that it "being
prepared with Milk and Water, strengthened! the inward
parts." Yet a 1706 "Poem Upon Tea"
by Mr. Tate, poet laureate to Queen Anne, mentions
only sugar and not milk.
One theory is that the custom came to Europe through
contact with the Mongolians, who today still use milk,
or the early Manchus, but there is no proof of this.
Chinese sources have so far provided no help on this
point, as Chinese today rarely use milk in tea. One
exception was recorded by a member of a 1655 Dutch
East India Company delegation to the Chinese emperor.
Officials who entertamed them at dinner in Guangzhou
(Canton) served very hot tea H boiled down by a third
and drunk with one-fourth warm milk and a little salt.
Some think the custom originated in Germany or France.
de Sevigny, whose letters published in later years
reveal so much about the customs of her time, remarked
in '1680 that the idea was invented by Madame de la
Sabilere. In fact, in both these countries tea never
gained wide popularity. But the custom of milk, carried
over to Britain, became a national norm.
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