So... how *does* tea work?

[clericalkender]

Well, I found out what "burning the milk" is. Apparently if you heat milk to a high enough temperature (by putting it into near-boiling water, for example), some of the proteins break down and turn into something else. Which is exactly the same process used to make UHT. Which is tasteless and horrible. I guess that makes sense. Since I mostly make

Comments

[clericalkender]

I think the difference is in the volumes. If you add milk to hot tea, the first bit of milk gets very hot very quickly, before more milk can cool down the mixture enough to keep it below whatever threshold it's looking for. If you add tea to milk, there's enough milk already in the cup that none of it ever gets too hot.

Maybe the lesson here is that if you're making tea in a cup you should slosh in the milk as fast as possible? I'm sure Jeff would approve...