Traditional tea pairings: an observation

Here I am already violating what I said about the blog going on vacation for a couple of days, but I couldn't resist.

Jo Johnson, of the Tea Blending Sisters, just joined us at the Pairteas Facebook page, so I was scrolling through the Sister's Facebook page and came across a link to Teforia's blogpost on Tea Pairing:

https://teforia.com/blog/tea-pairing-101/

In it are described traditional pairings from around the globe. What struck me was that—with the exception of the Japanese with matcha—everyone does something to the tea itself: add sugar, butter, milk, etc. I wondered: why?

Scottish fish and chips, with a milky tea.

Image from morguefile.com.

That question led me to looking into the different tea preparation methods, and that led me to the observation: long steeping times are the norm in the places discussed.

Long steeping times bring out the bitterness and astringency of the tea, which not only are unpleasant in themselves, but also effectively mask the flavor of the tea. The classic solution is to hide the bitterness by using either sweet or salt, and to cut the astringency by both diminishing bitterness with sweet or salt, and turning off TRPV1 with fat—astringency is the result of activating bitter receptors and TRPV1 (the hot receptor) simultaneously. What these additions do, however, is to change the flavor profile of the tea.

So when we think about pairings, we have to take into account not just the qualities of the tea, but also the conditions under which the tea is brewed, and what we would like to add directly to the tea, if anything.