Which is better: tea or coffee?

[Trem]

On a recent visit to that superb tea drinking county, Yorkshire I purchased a few ounces of ‘Bettys Tea Room.’ This is an exquisite blend of African and Assam - much recommended.

Is this the tea your referring to by chance? A kilo's worth would be a lot to purchase all in one go for me, but maybe it's something I'll put on the back burner and consider when my current stash gets a bit lower.

As for putting the milk in first, Orwell here betrays his class roots. Today, I would wager the majority of the English and Irish, myself included, put the milk in the cup first. Times change, tea doesn’t.

For anyone casually reading this who might be wondering what the heck we're going on about, I'll try to put the debate into context...

I believe putting milk in your cup after the tea is poured was a practice adopted by the upper classes (e.g. landed gentry) and for this reason became accepted as the 'correct' etiquette in those circles. For somewhat unclear reasons (possibly to do with lower quality ceramics that risked cracking if hot tea was poured directly), lower classes did the opposite and poured the milk in first -- but many also argued the tea tasted better this way. It's been shown since that pouring milk onto piping hot tea can denature some of the milk proteins and affect the taste of the final product.