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A chemist’s cup of tea

Nature Chemistry volume 12, pages 319–320 (2020)Cite this article

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Michelle Francl dips into the science of making tea.

I was prompted to think about Wilhelmina when I came across a Twitter thread2 begun by @andrechemist about the effect of the shape of tea bags on the extraction of tea. I dug out the paper where she carefully and clearly laid out her chemical analysis of infusions of black tea — an Assam Pekoe Souchong to be as precise as Green was. In it she notes her surprise at how little was known about the chemical composition of tea infusions (as opposed to the dry leaf), the kinetics of the infusion process and the optimal methods of extracting the desirable compounds, a gap in the literature she briskly sets out to remedy. Alas, tea bags had yet to be invented in 1885, so Wilhelmina had nothing to say about their shape.

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  1. Twitter: @MichelleFrancl

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, USA

    Michelle Francl

  2. Vatican Observatory, Vatican City, Vatican City State

    Michelle Francl

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  1. Michelle Francl
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Correspondence to Michelle Francl.

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Francl, M. A chemist’s cup of tea. Nat. Chem. 12, 319–320 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-020-0445-0

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