In 1680 Madame de la Sabliere, served tea with milk at her famous Paris salon. She is traditionally ascribed to introducing the custom to Europe. It is also thought that the poor quality in tea had to be softened with the flavor of milk just to make it palpable.
The answer is that in the 17th and 18th centuries the china cups tea was served in were so delicate they would crack from the heat of the tea. Milk was added to cool the liquid and stop the cups from cracking. This is why, even today, many English people add milk to their cups BEFORE adding the tea!
The Brits started adding milk to their tea somewhere around the 18th century. The ordinary cups of commoners couldn't bear the heat of piping hot tea.
The Chinese drink their tea without additional ingredients because they have quite a vast array of flavours to choose from, and most of them don't really taste good with milk.
Introduction of milk and sugar
Though tea was gaining popularity on its own at the beginning of the 18th century, the addition of sugar to the drink aided its rise in popularity further, as the British began adding sugar to their tea between 1685 and the early 18th century.
Traditionally, one would put milk in the cup before the tea to prevent the glaze on teacups from cracking. However, this is not an issue with modern tea cups.
The first people to drink milk regularly were early farmers and pastoralists in western Europe – some of the first humans to live with domesticated animals, including cows. Today, drinking milk is common practice in northern Europe, North America, and a patchwork of other places.
An early credible record of tea drinking dates to the 3rd century AD, in a medical text written by Chinese physician Hua Tuo. It first became known to the western world through Portuguese priests and merchants in China during the early 16th century. Drinking tea became popular in Britain during the 17th century.
The source was traced to melamine being added to animal feed, despite a ban imposed in June 2007 following the scandal over pet food ingredients exported to the United States.
The Manchus kept an imperial dairy near Beijing. At the turn of the century, the Chinese also drank little cow's milk.
Tea without milk is typically referred to as "black tea."
The tree was a Camellia sinensis, and the resulting drink was what we now call tea. It is impossible to know whether there is any truth in this story. But tea drinking certainly became established in China many centuries before it had even been heard of in the west.
The term "milk tea" refers to any tea drink with milk added. It can be as simple as a splash of milk in a hot cup of tea, or it can be a complex recipe including various ingredients, like the popular bubble tea.
While the roots of tea are traced back to Asia, the roots of adding sugar to tea can be traced back to Great Britain, Senegal, and India.
Research suggests adding milk reduces its beneficial impact. That's because milk contains proteins and fats that reduce the effectiveness of antioxidants, which can improve heart and gut health. Antioxidants can also slow the ageing process. So if it's health benefits you want from tea, drink it black.”
Absolutely! You can add milk to any tea you want. Don't listen to tea snobs who tell you that milk and tea do not go together. The best teas in the world taste beautiful, no matter how you choose to prepare them.
Of all the G8 countries, Canada is the only one to ban the production for sale, transportation and consumption of raw milk: milk that is unpasteurized. Raw milk can contain dangerous and sometimes deadly pathogens.
A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced two men to death for their role in the production and sale of melamine-tainted milk that killed at least six children and made nearly 300,000 ill.
An intriguing little detail in all this frothy commerce is that many people in China, like much of Asia, are lactose intolerant. Human children produce an enzyme that allows them to digest milk, but in much of the world, its levels taper off as they grow up.
Turkey had the highest rate of tea drinkers in 2022, with nine in ten people saying that they regularly drink the hot beverage. Kenya, a major producer and exporter of tea, also ranked highly in the 56 countries analyzed, with 83 percent of its respondents saying they regularly drink tea.
Tea was unknown to Europeans until the 16th century. It was by Portugal, the first European country advanced to East India, the first reference to tea was introduced to Europe. In 1569, the missionary from Portugal mentioned about tea in his letter to the king of Portugal.
Tea was first prepared in China around 2700 BC, making it one of the world's earliest beverages. Evidence shows that tea was consumed for a good thousand years before coffee was cultivated for the very first time. After its discovery, tea was initially consumed only by Emperor Shen Nung of China and his disciples.
Through analyzing degraded fats on unearthed potshards, scientists have discovered that Neolithic farmers in Britain and Northern Europe may have been among the first to begin milking cattle for human consumption. The dairying activities of these European farmers may have begun as early as 6,000 years ago.
The simple answer is no one knows who the first person to milk a cow was, a plausible theory was that our ancestors saw offspring feeding and copied the behaviour.
Although the inability to drink and eat dairy products (or more specifically the inability to digest lactose, the type of sugar found in milk) is commonly called “lactose intolerance”, this is actually a misnomer. All humans are lactose tolerant in early life because we are mammals.