A teaspoon is a teaspoon is a teaspoon 2790

Sheldon

You've been posting your thoughts for many years and you don't have any brain...

Here's where you logic breaks down, Sheldon.

THE PEOPLE WHO INVENTED THE TEASPOON WEREN'T CHINESE.

THE CHINESE DON'T TALK ABOUT "ONE TEASPOON PER CUP PLUS ONE FOR THE POT"

THE CHINESE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS THREAD

Only to medieval corpses like you.

What does this have to do with why teaspoons are the right size for a spoonful of dried tea leaves?

Because anyone who reads Pearl S. Buck knows the difference between imagery and stoichiometry, except you, everyone else who reads Pearl S. Buck isn't confused into thinking that this changes the size of the teaspoon.

The British upper clbutt, not given to handling food with their fingers, invented a utensil to handle the job.

Hi. I'm Blair. I've posted infinitely more articles to rec.food.drink.tea than you have, and have about $100 worth of premium black and white teas in my cupboard right now. Mostly single-estate darjeelings. You want to throw down on this topic? I didn't think so, google-boy.

Whithered, rolled, oxidized, whole-leaf camilla sinensis - black tea - from India, as cultivated and delivered by the British East India Company for the last 400 years, is all approximately the same density, especially in those varieties popular among the sort of people who could buy tea by the kilo and would invent a spoon to facilitate transferring the proper quantity from caddy to pot. Any real tea drinker knows that.

The Queen doesn't drink the dust you buy in bags, sheldumb, so don't start whining about broken leaves to pretend you have a response.

I tried to teach you why a teaspoon is the size it is, and you taught us all that you never will learn because you never have.

--Blair

P.S. The Chinese, by the way, are partial to unoxidized (green) teas and pu-erh (teas pressed into bricks or nests then dried and fermented in caves for decades; a chisel or screwdriver helps break off pieces for brewing), though they do drink black tea. They make tea self-serve style using tiny pots (yi-xing are reputedly the best) or brew-and-drink cups called gaiwan. A gaiwan has a lid that is used to retain heat, and to keep the leaves in as the liquor is sipped. They eyeball the quantity they use because they aren't constantly making communal pots and have better control over proportion, and brewing and drinking time. "Gong-fu" is the skill/sense of knowing just how much tea to use, just how hot the water should be, just how long to presoak, whether to discard the presoak, how long to steep before sipping, how often to sip, when to sip more at the peak of the flavor for the steep, when to discard and re-steep, and how many steeps the variety and vintage of leaf can take. It's utterly personal, and neither a teaspoon nor a book nor a stone monkey's butt like Sheldon can tell anyone how to do it better.