Thank you for reading Between the Layers! Please enjoy and share this free post with your friends. Steeped in Controversy: Salt in Tea? - No. 271Plus Nancy Silverton’s peanut butter cookies, chewy + delicious thanks to sorghum flour
WHEN AN AMERICAN CHEMIST suggested a pinch of salt would make a more perfect cup of tea, she found herself in hot water. Michelle Francl, author of Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, created quite a stir, so to speak, when her book was released 10 days ago suggesting salt in boiling water enhances flavor and takes away tea’s bitterness. An American scientist wanting to improve on a beverage that is a national institution is ‘’absurd,’’ cried the BBC. The ensuing media meltdown across the pond couldn’t help but harken back two and a half centuries when the patriots dumped 300 chests of British tea in Boston Harbor to protest taxation, sparking the American Revolution. Here’s what the U.S. Embassy in London had to say about it on X, formerly Twitter. I just wanted to track down Michelle Francl and learn a bit more.
Francl, a longtime chemistry professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, sticks by her guns in spite of the controversy. An avid tea drinker raised in the coffee-swilling Midwest, she first explored the chemistry of tea during the COVID pandemic. While many of us were getting into gardening or sourdough bread making, she was wondering along with her colleagues on #ChemTwitter if tetrahedral-shaped tea bags made a better cup of tea or just looked cool? She was curious if a tea bag or loose leaves yielded the most caffeine in a cup and how milk and sugar played into the taste and appearance of tea. She studied the writings of chemists who had already explored tea chemistry including 8th Century Chinese tea master Lu Yu, author of ‘’The Classic of Tea.’’ Lu Yu wrote that tea eased joint pain, cured headaches, helped with indigestion, and was improved if a pinch of salt was added to the boiling water to take away bitter tannins. Fascinated, Francl wrote an essay on how to make a perfect cup of tea from a chemist’s perspective for a journal called Nature Chemistry. The London-based Royal Society of Chemistry, a professional organization and publisher for chemists, requested she develop the essay into a book. It had already published books on the chemistry of cooking and the chemistry of chocolate. So tea chemistry seemed logical. And no one could have staged a better book launch.
No publicity is bad publicityI told Francl via telephone that I didn’t feel too sorry for her when the British press piled on. In less than two weeks, the book has gone into a second printing. It releases in the US on February 14. I’ve heard of far crazier things than tossing salt in boiling water to make tea, and there might be some truth to what she’s saying. Serious Eats thinks so: ‘’Why wouldn’t we put this magical, ubiquitous bitter-mitigating compound into our icky cups of tea?’’ When I was researching the origins of sweet tea, a beloved beverage in the American South, I found recipes calling for a pinch of baking soda to prevent tea from clouding. I also recall a story my husband once told me about working in a small hotel in southeastern Georgia where the cook told him with a wink-wink that he plied the morning coffee with salt because it made it less bitter tasting. And judging how long the highway patrolmen who came in for a cup of coffee ending up staying all morning, he might have been right, he says.
The leaves of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) contain hundreds of chemical compounds that contribute to taste, color, and aroma.Francl says caffeine in tea is more pronounced if the tea is brewed from fresh leaves versus a tea bag. And tea can be helpful in reducing pain, she adds. Francl keeps a tea bag in her first aid kit because the caffeine makes Ibuprofen more effective when treating acute pain. She says sun tea doesn’t need the sun; it just needs time to brew. And lemon added to tea will make it lighter because the lemon lowers the pH. But just because lemon tea looks paler in color doesn’t mean the tea hasn’t steeped sufficiently. For those of us in a hurry who microwave a cup of water in which we steep a tea bag, we shouldn’t be surprised that a scum forms on the top. The water doesn’t get hot enough. Squeeze in lemon, and that scum goes away, Francl says. Add milk to tea, something close to the heart of British tea drinkers, and expect cloudiness. But when you pour the milk in the cup—before the tea or after—is personal preference. A chemist will say it’s best to add it after the tea is poured. ‘’It’s hard to trace back when this actually began,’’ says Francl. ‘’George Orwell wrote an essay about tea, and said milk is last and he is firm about it. But many people think if you put the milk in first and pour in the tea it warms up the milk. Suit yourself.’’ Tea is personal, but don’t take it too personallyI can’t help but see irony in the Brits requisitioning her book and then roasting it. Scottish-born historian Annette Laing who writes Non-Boring History on Substack, insists this is a ‘’manufactured controversy.’’ ‘’Teasing people is part of what we do,’’ says Laing. And tea, adds Laing, is more than a beverage. ‘’It’s a meal. It’s an institution!’’ Anytime you have sorrow or disaster, you have tea, she says. Serving a ‘’cuppa’’ is ‘’very much wrapped up in feelings of home and friendship.’’ ‘’In the 18th Century, the poor would line up outside rich persons’ homes and servants would sell leftover food and leftover tea. You can make a decent cup of tea with used tea leaves. Sugar was pouring into Britain from the West Indies at that time, and it cut down on the tannins. Then in the 19th Century tea came from India, so it was cheaper and became the national drink. To an 1890 factory worker, a cup of tea became a meal with a cold jam sandwich.’’
But you can’t blame a scientist for trying to improve things. Francl drinks a nice smoky Assam in the morning and Rose Congou—a black tea scented with rose petals, supposedly a favorite of the late Princess Diana—in the afternoon. She buys her tea from Upton Tea Imports in Boston. A fairly boring tea drinker myself choosing PG Tips or Yorkshire Gold black tea in the morning and going as crazy as Earl Grey in the afternoon, I wondered what salt might do to my usual cup. So I first poured boiling water into a tall white porcelain mug. I added a small pinch - maybe 10 individual pieces - of kosher salt. And then I added the tea bag and let it steep about one minute because Francl says that’s all the time you need for caffeine to be released. I took a sip. It tasted rounder and quite nice! But do I really need to add salt? I salt my eggs and spread my toast with salted butter. I may skip the salt because who needs more salt in our diet when there’s the risk of hypertension, high blood pressure? Plus, I already love the flavor of plain black tea. Salt might work for folks who don’t love the taste of tea and need convincing.
Salt changes tasteIn cooking, salt flavors food, balances sugar, slows the growth of yeast, and tenderizes. But mostly, Francl says, salt changes what we taste. When I spread salted butter on toast, the toast has more flavor. The jam tastes better, too. Francl says I can thank chemistry for all of that. ‘’When sodium ions are present, we are going to taste food more. My dad had no sense of smell, but he salted heavily because he said it gave food taste,’’ she says. No wonder MSG (monosodium glutamate) is a called a flavor enhancer. So all this talk about salt in tea made me hungry for some salty-ish American cookies, not biscuits, just cookies full of peanut butter. I had made a mental note for months to bake the exact cookie recipe made famous in Los Angeles pastry chef Nancy Silverton’s book, The Cookie That Changed My Life. I bought the sorghum flour, Skippy peanut butter, and roasted peanuts like she advised. I was ready for my life to be changed by a cookie.
But honestly, these cookies were a lot of trouble.After baking one batch, I didn’t like the cluster of roasted peanuts on top or the goo of peanut butter underneath. I just wanted peanut butter cookies of childhood—am I starting to whine like a Brit?—except better. I wanted the cross-hatch pattern of a fork on top, careful balance of flavors between sugar and salt, and a pronounced peanut butter oomph. Silverton’s recipe delivers all that if you just use her recipe for the cookie dough and don’t finish the cookies as she instructs. Thanks to Silverton, founder of La Brea Bakery, I learned two new things about cookie science. One, a little sorghum flour makes cookies chewier. The recipe calls for a cup each of sorghum flour and unbleached wheat flour. Secondly, she bakes the cookies at 375ºF for four minutes on the top oven rack and then places them on the bottom rack for another four minutes. They were brilliant, as the British would say. Baking cookies and brewing tea are cozy February things to do. They seem non-controversial. And you might want to keep them that way. Or not. Happy baking and steeping! - xo, Anne P.S. Coming Thursday for paid subscribers, I’ll share links to my Super Bowl last-minute favorites and a new recipe for game day.
THE RECIPE: Nancy Silverton’s Peanut Butter Cookies (My Way)Well, they’re actually Los Angeles baker Roxana Jullapat’s cookie that she sells at a bakery-cafe called Friends & Family. And as I mention in this post, this recipe comes from Nancy Silverton’s book, The Cookie That Changed My Life. She presses her thumb into the balls of dough, spoons in a little creamy peanut butter and halfway through baking, tops them with some roasted peanuts. They’re good, but a lot of trouble. For simplicity, I shape this dough into balls, dredge in sugar, and press down twice with a fork before baking. No goo, no roasted peanuts. But perfection! If you don’t have sorghum flour, substitute a scant cup of all-purpose. Makes about 40 three-inch cookies
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