Dr Michelle Francl has been in the news a multitude of times in the past month or so upon the publication of her new book “Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea”. In the book, she suggests that adding salt to tea makes it taste less bitter which caused quite an eruption for British tea fans. From the U.S. Embassy in London to Managers at Tea and Sympathy, Brits have been in a boil over this new suggestion. Writers Note: As a Brit and a former student of Dr Francl’s, I can in fact confirm that salt in tea works!
Sitting down with Dr Francl, Bi-Co news got to ask her a few questions about the book and the international response it received.
When you were writing the book, did you ever expect that it would end up on BBC news and splashed across newspaper headlines?
“Absolutely not, I assumed there would be a lot of tea drinking chemists who would be interested. There’s a group on twitter called chem twitter and I thought there might be a little activity on chem twitter and that would be what we would see, but I had no idea that I would end up on BBC or anything else.”
I read your opinion article in chemistry world, and it seemed to me like you wrote this book with a non specialised audience in mind, even though you did engage in the work of academia by researching hundreds of papers and conducting experiments, so why did you decide to take this hybrid approach?
“Well, what I wanted was for people to find the joy in chemistry so for me I think that to help people see the world through the eyes of a chemist is a good thing if you can do it without coming across as somebody’s high school chemistry teacher. There’s reasons that not everyone’s a chemist but I think there’s a lot we can understand about the world. When I look at a mug of tea there are as many molecules in a mug of tea as there are stars in the universe so in some ways, theres a whole miniature universe in your hand. Wouldn’t be kind of cool to know something about that?”
I know your background is in both theoretical chemistry and science communication. How did you come into those two fields and how do you blend them together?
I started as a theoretical chemist and I got into writing because I started blogging, way back when blogging was a thing. One of the editors at a new chemistry journal called Nature Chemistry and read the blog post and asked me if I would write a regular column for them about science policy and culture, written for chemists. So, it covers things like philosophy of science and sociology of science and occasionally tea! The invitation from Stuart Cantrell to do that really got me started thinking about how to communicate across divides, like how to talk about philosophy to chemists and how to talk about chemistry to philosophers. I wrote a couple of articles and after that, I had a pretty broad reach. And, as a theoretical chemist, you’re often trying to talk to experimentalists about what you’re doing so I think that training across the divides between the sub fields really helped me learn how to communicate science more broadly.
What led you to determine that a pinch of salt can helps reduce the bitterness in a cup of tea? Was it experiments, literature, a combination?
It actually started with an 18th century manuscript that I read in a scholarly translation with commentary. In it, the tea master talks about using a little bit of salt in the sea and the commentary didn’t actually talk about the science of it even though the commentary did try to address the science. So I wondered, is there any science about salt in tea? Turns out, there is science about salt in coffee! Coffee chemists know something about this and what they discovered is that the sodium ions block some of the receptors for bitterness and make a cup of coffee taste less bitter and it does the same thing for tea. So then, I did my own experiment. I brewed a cup of tea and added a tiny amount of salt in (not even enough to taste), and boy does it change the bitter quality!
Something interesting I’ve noticed, especially with a lot of the people in Britain, they go to put the salt in but they put way too much in and think “well this is disgusting!”, but what you had said was a pinch of salt, not a whole cup.
Right, I said if you could taste it, its too much! So, I do find it funny; I saw someone put a whole tea spoon in and thought “no wonder that’s un-drinkable!” Part of it is interesting too, that people don’t read very far.
What went through your mind when the US embassy in London posted that tweet?
I came into my office and got onto my computer so I could print out some stuff to I could teach class and there was a request from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s publicity team who wanted to respond to the embassy thing. I hadn’t even seen it because I was getting ready to teach but then I looked and thought “I cant believe this is happening!”. By the time I got back, I had an email box filled with requests for people to ask about the salt. But the funniest thing was, my sister whose daughter lives in Norway, sent me a text saying “I can’t believe this is true, it’s not true is it?!”
What do you hope people take away from the book as they read it?
I hope that they’ll be able to see some of the really big ideas that chemists use; molecular structure and function being related, opposites attract, proximity of molecules matter. That’s what I really hope people take away, those underpinnings, and to see how it works in tea and other things. I hope people can make a better cup of tea!
What lessons will you personally take from your experience writing the book as-well as the widespread attention?
I mean, I already have the proposal for the next book which is nothing to do with tea but does have to do with chemistry for the general public. I guess one thing Ive learnt is that I can write this kind of book and that people will read it which is an interesting piece for me to take away. I don’t think that any other book I write is going to generate this kind of publicity again and I have learnt how to deal with all of this! so, keeping track of it and trying to respond to all the different questions from different outlets has been a bit of fun challenge, to think about how to present academic work in a way that’s appealing to people. But, I probably will never have to do it again!
Finally, have any of your students brought this up in your classes? Are they aware?
Oh yes, they’re totally aware! On Wednesday, one of my students raises their hand and asks, ‘My mother is texting me and asking if this is my chemistry professor,’ and she said she texted back, ‘It sure is!,’ so they’re definitely aware and think it’s kind of fun and interesting.
