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Lady tasting tea

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Re: Lady tasting tea

#61

Post by kijin »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #30
nicbou wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently milk before tea is lower class because poor people would want to avoid cracking low quality porcelain with hot tea. Fascinating!

Was that a genuine concern? Boiling water has a fixed maximum temperature. Not sure that room temp->90C is all that different from room temp to 100C for ceramic.

It's more about time than the final temperature.

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.

Re: Lady tasting tea

#62

Post by klyrs »

bloopernova wrote: post #44
klyrs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't need a lick of electricity! If by valves you mean fluidics [1]... at which point, harnessing the Niagra Falls and building out a fluidized supercomputer covering the great lakes would probably suffice. No worries about the waste heat, though, it's water cooled! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics

Apologies, I meant a vacuum tube: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube

No apologies needed; I quite like the image your word choice inspired. Shame about the fish; wrong kind of bits.

Re: Lady tasting tea

#63

Post by analog31 »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #30
nicbou wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently milk before tea is lower class because poor people would want to avoid cracking low quality porcelain with hot tea. Fascinating!

Was that a genuine concern? Boiling water has a fixed maximum temperature. Not sure that room temp->90C is all that different from room temp to 100C for ceramic.

Cracking teacups was a concern.

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.

Re: Lady tasting tea

#64

Post by dumbo-octopus »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #45
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And low enough rate of thermal conductivity.

Sure, thermal expansion can crack ceramic. More my question is, did this really happen? The operating parameters for a ceramic cup are well known. A cup that is ok for 90C tea vs 100C tea seems like terrible design which would run you out of business if your competitor could make cups that were not known for breaking if you did not let the water cool long enough.

It’s not about 100C vs 90C, it’s about the sudden change from 25C to 95C, versus a gradual change from 25C up to ~70C.

Re: Lady tasting tea

#65

Post by seoulmetro »

markdown wrote: post #57
seoulmetro wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measure is not being used as a literal verb. It's being used as an approximate measure. The same way we measure how much time we spend doing a task without a clock.

No it's not. Read again > measure a specific amount of milk in isolation than to eyeball how much of it you've just added to something else

Yes, it is. They are measuring the milk in isolation, which in this instance means to pour (and measure with your eyes) as it fills the empty container before the tea. Whereas you can't really measure how much the volume is changing (eyeballing) in isolation.

Think of it as the difference between measuring a liquid in a container and eyeballing a liquid in another liquid.

Re: Lady tasting tea

#66

Post by smcin »

gerdesj wrote: post #49
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always preferred the taste of milk-first, and it never crossed my mind that the difference wasn't noticeable. 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.

The milk first and milk second thing has been around for as long as I can recall (I'm 53). Mis and mif! Never a class marker but just a preference. 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…

It's not so important these days since most ceramics don't shatter much.

But is said to still be a class marker.

Re: Lady tasting tea

#67

Post by memco »

af3d wrote: post #23
zug_zug wrote: post #9

> Thus, if and only if the lady properly categorized all 8 cups was Fisher willing to reject the null hypothesis – effectively acknowledging the lady's ability at a 1.4% significance level (but without quantifying her ability). 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 a…

The probability of guessing all eight correctly is 0.5^8 (or roughly 0.39%). The chances of such a thing happening by mere fluke are quite slim. Now personally, I would have preferred a few more glasses to be even more certain, but hey, for all practical purposes those results do seem fairly credible.

I wonder whether pouring them together in addition to the first or second cases would be useful for helping to ascertain how keen the sense was.

Re: Lady tasting tea

#68

Post by taejo »

Loughla wrote: post #59
xandrius wrote: post #52

To solve this debacle, I only brew my tea in milk. Much better taste. I'd rather just plain tea than water tea + milk, it just seems the worst of both worlds to me.

Jesus Christ I hope you're joking with the brewing tea in milk. That's terrifying.

There are more teas in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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.

Re: Lady tasting tea

#69

Post by taejo »

chrsw wrote: post #43

I heard about this recently but I can't remember where. Was the topic of this tea test on a podcast or something recently?

There was a post here about it, a couple months ago, I think

Re: Lady tasting tea

#70

Post by LeonB »

mmh0000 wrote: post #6

Of course, any article mentioning tea, must include a reference to ISO 3103 — A Standardized Method for Brewing Tea[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103

I think the song TUSA, in which Ginger Baker describes the process of making Tea is also a required reference for any articles on the topic.

- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DTuXBoA688Y

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