Book review: Steeped by Michelle Francl

a tea-drinking chemist reviews a book about tea written by a tea-drinking chemist

Steeped by Michelle Francl

Of course, I was going to read this book, and write about it.  Steeped is a book about tea, written by a tea-loving chemist.  Francl is a professor of chemistry at Bryn Mawr.  Although the book is written for a general audience, there is chemistry, with structures and everything.  There is a chapter of introduction to chemistry, if the class is a distant memory for you.  Chemistry is how Francl understands the world and how I understand the world, so it seems necessary to discuss chemistry if we are going to understand tea.

Steeped is charming, the tone is friendly, as if over a cup of tea, and the writing is neither particularly dense or difficult, nor annoyingly childish.  The chapters begin with tasting notes, a tea or two Francl thinks would go particularly well with the chapter.  Each chapter closes with “brewing a better cup” which are the take-home notes from the chapter, and further reading.  A lifetime spent with textbooks might be showing through.

There is some history in Steeped, but the origins of human interaction with tea are lost in prehistory.  Somewhere in Asia, a long, long time ago.  The variations in tea plants and in how the leaves are processed between the fields and the cup are covered.  There is some discussion as well of the cultural associations of tea, but less of that than the chemistry of tea and its components.

Caffeine is the headliner among the pharmacologically active ingredients and gets a chapter all to itself.  Theanine is prominent in the chapter titled “Zen in the cup” and I wonder if I should get some on Amazon, it sounds like great stuff.  Maybe I should just drink more tea.

There is a very practical chapter about brewing tea – tea leaves, tea pots, tea balls, tea bags, temperature of the water, changes in temperature of the water during brewing.  Francl explains why microwaving water is anathema, while confessing to rewarming a cup of cold tea that way on occasion.  Very comprehensive, and worth reading.  If you treasure your cup of tea just like you always make it, just keep on doing that.

A couple of points for general use:  preheat tea pot or tea cup (if not insulated); steep 3-5 minutes, no more.  Temperature affects flavor, and the temperature will drop quickly if the pot or cup is not pre-warmed.  The caffeine is mostly extracted in the first minute, and good flavor molecules in the first few minutes and after that it's just bitter alkaloids being extracted.  I am sure this will not deflect my sister, for example, from leaving her teabag in the cup for the duration – I think she likes the bitter edge.  To each, her own.

I loved the book, every bit of it, but, like the author, I am a tea-drinking chemist.  I hope other tea drinkers love it, too, and plan to circulate my copy among my non-chemist friends, including my tea-drinking English professor sister.  Maybe I’ll report back.

Steeped was published recently and reviewed extensively.  The book is widely available.  It is an injustice to the book that one throwaway sentence about salt got all the press, so just set that aside and enjoy the book.

Francl, Michelle. 2024. Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea. 1st edition. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.