But you wait until the tea is just above drinking temperature and use the cream to cool it off. You don’t add the dairy to the hot hot hot tea.
Also, that Royal Society’s instructions involve a microwave. A microwave! I think that puts paid to whatever credibility it might have ever had.
My dear boy, one NEVER adds cream to tea! One adds tea to MILK!
Don’t you people have half-&-half? Politics is the art of the possible.
The RSC suggest that the best drinking temperature is 60-65C and that denaturing occurs above about 75C. If your milk is at 5C, then a >60C cup of tea can only be achieved from a <75C brew if you add less than about 13% milk.
I have no idea what proportion of milk I use, or what temperature I prefer to drink it at, so I suppose I should really measure both to find out…
I have found that I can’t discern any difference between MIL and MIF with semi-skimmed milk, but full fat milk produces a nasty-looking film with MIL.
I came for this.
Will leave this in return;
Sounds like you have some kind of gross-ass European mucus milk. Or maybe some problem with your water. Are you… are you just dipping buckets into the Thames?
There’s a (non-alcoholic) cocktail called ‘Thames Water’, you know.
We do have moderately hard water, which probably doesn’t help.
Milk in first or the milk gets too hot.
Ah, but he is not foreign, is he? That makes all the difference.
When I lived in Britain, it was explained to me that the custom of putting milk in the cup first had to do with the upper class having delicate bone china (in reality, bone china is more rugged than it looks) and not wanting the shock of the hot tea to crack the teacup. Milk first meant the temperature dropped down to a safe level.
Except, as I mentioned, bone china isn’t delicate at all. But that was the story, FWIW.
OMG, that is NASTY! Who mixes Coke and OJ? I think I’d rather drink actual Thames water.
It tastes better than it looks; but then it does get its name from its resemblance to liquised faeces.
Never tried OJ but Pepsi + Orange Crush is a standard off menu item at White Castle. Just ask for a mix. It is tasty.
I have heard just the opposite (the sign of a good story is that it also exists as its own antistory).
Milk first is a middle class thing because the shock of boiling tea can crack a stoneware cup, whereas bone china can stand it, so MIL is U, MIF is non-U.
If you’re a British social climber, you’re probably a MILF (milk-in-last fan). 
The teapot seldom had time to cool down in our house when I was a kid, so I learned the true and proper way to make tea at an early age. My parents, both of solidly middle class Brit stock, always insisted on milk first. Also, always warm the teapot before adding the tea.
My grandfather came to Canada from England as a young man. When we visited him on his farm in Manitoba, I was fascinated to see him pour his tea into his saucer and drink it from there.
Oh one does, when one is I.
