It may seem like a cruel joke, but a pinch of salt could be the secret to the perfect cup of tea.
This is according to Dr. Michelle Francl, an American chemist who claims to have found the secret to the perfect drink.
His unusual recipe has caused a stir by including hot milk and a pinch of salt.
Dr. Francl might think she knows best, but how does this recipe compare to the classic British cup of tea?
MailOnline’s Wiliam Hunter put his recipe to the test and got some surprising results.
It may seem like a cruel joke, but a pinch of salt could be the secret to the perfect cup of tea.
Dr. Michelle Francl, an American chemist, claims to have found the secret to the perfect drink. Her unusual recipe has caused a stir by including hot milk and a pinch of salt.
Making a cup of tea is usually as simple as it gets.
But in the search for the perfect tea break, Dr. Francl says there are a few extra steps to take.
First, she recommends preheating your cup before even looking at a tea bag.
She claims this will help the cup stay hotter longer while steeping, which will theoretically increase the amount of caffeine and antioxidants in the cup.
I warmed the cup by adding some hot water for a few minutes, before throwing it away.
Dr. Francl recommends loose leaf tea, which can offer a more complex and natural flavor.
However, working within the constraints of the MailOnline kitchen, I opted for Tetley’s English Breakfast.
The tea was then allowed to steep for three minutes, which is, depending on the box it came in, the ideal brewing time.
But there were still a few more steps to go before I could relax with my well-deserved cup of tea.
People may debate whether cold milk should be added before or after tea, but this recipe takes it a step further.
Dr. Francl calls for adding hot milk after making the tea, so I gave it a good dose of microwave milk before adding it to the tea.
In the quest to make the perfect cup of tea, we started by preheating our cup (left) by filling it with boiling water and microwaving some milk (right) to make sure it was nice and warm.
However, in addition to being very difficult to pour from one cup to another, the heated milk gave the tea a slightly unattractive appearance.
Heating the milk is intended to prevent curdling, which can occasionally occur when cold milk hits hot tea.
However, when I tried this, the tea took on an almost waxy, slightly frothy appearance that was far from ideal.
Fortunately, this subsided after a while with some vigorous shaking.
To keep things scientific, I also made a cup of tea as I normally would, using the same type of tea bag and letting it steep for the same amount of time.
Can you see the difference? The cup on the right has been brewed with hot milk in a hot mug, while the cup on the left has been brewed normally. At first the hot milk seemed to curdle slightly, but this dissipated after stirring.
Now it was time for the last and most controversial step of Dr. Francl’s recipe: adding salt.
While many of us might add sugar to our brew, Dr. Francl says it’s actually the salt that’s best for reducing the bitterness of tea.
And here science is definitely on Dr. Francl’s side.
Our tongues are covered with different taste receptors for different flavors.
Normally, the tannins in tea that are released when brewing activate bitter receptors, signaling to our brain that we are tasting something unpleasant.
But when we add salt to foods and drinks, sodium ions bind to salt receptors on our tongue and suppress our ability to taste bitterness.
Research published in 1997 even suggests that salt selectively filters out unpleasant flavors but allows us to detect pleasant flavors such as sweetness.
This all sounds great, but does it really work?
Dr. Frankl’s recipe for a “perfect” cup of tea has proven so shocking that the US embassy in London even made a joking post on X (formerly Twitter) about the recipe.
Breaking all the rules we added a pinch of salt to the ‘perfect’ cup on the (right) to see if it would really be less bitter. For comparison, the regular cup of tea (left) was left unseasoned.
The short answer: absolutely not.
Before adding the salt, I would say there was a slight improvement in the “perfect” tea compared to the control cup.
Perhaps it was a psychological effect of all the extra effort, but the tea perhaps tasted a little better.
This could also be a product of temperature as between the hot milk and the preheated cup, the perfect tea was still piping hot even after a few minutes.
But adding salt was certainly a mistake.
I added a pinch of salt to the ‘perfect cup’ and left my control tea unadulterated.
MailOnline tried adding salt to our tea, as recommended by Dr. Francl. However, as you can see from these before and after pictures, the result was a rather unpleasant, fiery, and strangely salty drink.
The result was simply a salty cup of incredibly hot tea that tasted horrible.
Concerned that I had added too much salt to make it a fair test, I added a small pinch to the control tea.
As I added more and more salt, I found that the result was either a cup of tea that tasted almost the same as before or a drink that was disturbingly salty.
However, to give this theory the best chance of success, I decided to repeat the experiment with a few different types of tea.
I made a raspberry-pomegranate fruit tea and an Earl Gray and added a pinch of salt to each.
I had high hopes for Earl Grey, thinking it would be the closest thing to the loose leaf teas recommended by Dr. Francl.
In the name of science, MailOnline tested Dr. Francl’s recommendation to add salt to our tea with a few different types of tea. We added salt to a cup of fruit and herb tea (left) and a cup of Earl Gray (right) to approximate the required loose leaf tea.
But if there was an improvement, it was so imperceptibly subtle that it escaped my fatigued taste buds.
While not entirely unpleasant, the main effect was to make the tea slightly salty.
The fruit tea, on the other hand, was quite delicious.
Adding salt to sweet tea produced something that tasted a lot like a hot electrolyte drink.
But whether that sounds appealing to you will probably be a matter of personal taste.
Is this the perfect round of tea? Adding salt to regular tea was unnoticeable or unpleasant, but adding a little seasoning to fruit tea was quite tasty.
So, should you try this recipe next time you go for tea at the office?
Unless you have a real grudge against your colleagues, I would advise you to avoid trying this recipe with them.
The hot cup and milk are a nice touch, but they are messy and take a long time to set up, especially in a cramped office kitchen.
Even after all the testing, the “perfect” tea was still significantly hotter than the control, which could be ideal for someone who hates cold tea.
Meanwhile, adding salt is either totally undetectable or deeply unpleasant.
Perhaps the effect would be better with high-quality loose leaf tea, but for people who use tea bags, this “perfect” recipe will not really be to their liking.