"A Nice Cup of Tea" is an essay by English author
George Orwell, first published in the ''
London Evening Standard'' on 12 January 1946. It is a discussion of the craft of making a cup of
tea
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of ''Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and norther ...
, including the line: "Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden."
["How to make a perfect cuppa"](_blank)
BBC. Retrieved 30 December 2014
Orwell wrote that "tea is one of the mainstays of civilisation in this country and causes violent disputes over how it should be made", and his rules cover such matters as the best shape for a
teacup, the advisability of using water that is still
boiling
Boiling is the rapid vaporization of a liquid, which occurs when a liquid is heated to its boiling point, the temperature at which the vapour pressure of the liquid is equal to the pressure exerted on the liquid by the surrounding atmosphere. Ther ...
, and his preference for very strong tea.
He also considers what he calls "one of the most controversial points of all" – whether to put tea in the cup first and add the milk after, or the other way around, acknowledging, "indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject".
[George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). "The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946". p. 34. Secker & Warburg] Orwell says tea should be poured first because "one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round".
"How to make a perfect cuppa: put milk in first"
The Guardian. Retrieved 30 December 2014 "I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable", he writes.
See also
* Bibliography of George Orwell
* ISO 3103
*Tea classics
Tea as a beverage was first consumed in China and the earliest extant mention of tea in literature is the ''Classic of Poetry'', although the ideogram used (Tu, 荼) in these texts can also designate a variety of plants, such as sowthistle an ...
* Tea in the United Kingdom
References
External links
A Nice Cup of Tea: original essay published by The Orwell Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nice Cup of Tea, A
Essays by George Orwell
1946 essays
Tea culture
Works originally published in the London Evening Standard
Tea in the United Kingdom