I’d wager that almost everyone has heard (and maybe tried) of milk tea. You may even be in the habit of adding a splash of milk and a spoonful of sugar in your tea. But how did these habits come about, given that tea in China is drunk straight? In The Tale of Tea, George van Driem uncovered some interesting information which I just had to share.

Sugar in Tea… from the Chinese?

Let’s start with the sweet topic of sugar. Interestingly, the practice of taking your tea with sugar may have originated with the Chinese. Not the Chinese in mainland China, but those who were in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia). George van Driem writes in The Tale of Tea that

“Jacob de Bondt, who stayed in the East Indies from 1627 until his death in 1631, mentioned that having tea with sugar was a method occasionally practiced by some affluent Chinese tea drinkers whom he observed in Java. In 1625, Tulp mentioned the practice of boiling tea with either a pinch of salt or alternatively with plenty of sugar as two possible ways of preparing tea which had been observed in the East. In 1654, de Rhodes corroborated that some Chinese tea drinkers added a little sugar to offset the natural bitterness of the beverage.” 

To add to these accounts, Dutch physician and botanist Willem ten Rhijne in observed in 1677 that the practice of taking tea with sugar was adopted from the Chinese by the Westerners, but not all Chinese did this. Possibly, this was a practice developed by the Chinese in the then-Dutch East Indies/present-day Indonesia.

From there, the practice of taking tea with sugar seems to have spread to the Europeans living in the East, and then to the Europe itself. Van Driem notes that “When the tea in Holland was brewed as strong as it was in India, its bitter taste often prompted people to add sugar“, though the Dutch did eventually end up drinking their tea neat.

It appears that the English knew about the practice of taking sugar with tea from the Dutch, though the book does not elaborate on how or when the practice caught on in England. But it seems to have been widespread by 1660, as Thomas Garaway wrote in ‘An Exact Description of the Growth, Quality, and Vertues of the leaf TEA’ that he “recommended that tea with be taken with virgin honey instead of with sugar” to prevent stones and cleanse the kidneys and ureter. It wouldn’t be a leap to assume that if Garaway was offering alternatives to sugar, that by then sugar in tea had become a widely adopted practice.

Milk in Tea… from the French?

Now, what about tea with milk? According to van Driem’s research, in a letter dated 16th Feb 1680, Marquise de Sevigne “recorded that Marguerite Hessein, dame de la Sabliere, had innovated the practice of taking her tea with milk. ” He goes on to elaborate that

“the fashion of taking tea with milk, or milk with tea, caught on amongst a segment of the French aristocracy and was already an established practice long before the English became the avid tea drinkers that they are today. The Dutch likewise first became familiar with the French practice of adding milk to tea at this time, although the practice never became widespread.” 

In this case, van Driem attributes the practice of taking tea with milk in England to the French, as the practice of taking their tea with milk first became fashionable in France.

I should add that according to what I’ve learnt, the practice of taking tea with milk (or butter) is also common in Mongolia and Tibet, where milk was used to give the tea added nutrients in response to the climate there. I don’t know if that influenced the French or the English, but even if the practice of adding milk evolved independently in both regions of the world, we definitely need to acknowledge this fact. If my timelines aren’t wrong, milk tea in Mongolia and Tibet would have been created earlier than 1680, since they started drinking tea much earlier than the Europeans.

Now, when did the practice of putting milk and sugar in your tea first happen? I have no idea, but aren’t we glad that it happened? I like my tea straight most of the time, but sometimes, you just want a cup of hot tea with milk and sugar.