Ceri Jones from Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital in the University Hospital of Wales in the UK has ensured that you will no longer have to debate during your tea breaks about which biscuit is the best for dunking.
After seeing how staff at NHS hospitals avoid breaks due to time restrictions, researchers decided to determine how much time is required to make a cup of tea that is both enjoyable and safe to drink.
In line with the custom of serving tea with a biscuit, and since dunking may help tea cool more quickly, they also evaluated the nutritional value and durability of four biscuit kinds after dunking.
The findings of the study are based on six tests conducted using resources that are commonly found in the staff room of the surgery department at the University Hospital of Wales.
After coming to an understanding of how to make a regular cup of tea, they gathered information on how quickly the tea’s temperature dropped and how long it took to reach an acceptable sipping temperature (known as the time to drinkable tea or TTDT).
The researchers selected four types of round non-chocolate biscuits – oat, digestive, rich tea, and shortie – to find the best biscuit to pair with tea based on its nutritional content, ability to absorb liquid, crunchiness, and integrity when dunked in tea.
After preparing three separate cups of tea, the researchers collected tea cooling and TTDT data for each biscuit type. The biscuits were ranked from best to worst (scores of 1 to 4), with points taken away for things like getting too hot or breaking.
Important discoveries included the fact that 30 mL of semi-skimmed cow’s milk takes around 420 seconds for a cup of tea to attain peak palatability (61ºC), but 40 mL only takes about 370 seconds.
After all six tests, the oat biscuit came out on top. For example, it had the greatest mean dunk duration of 34.3 seconds to reach the dunk break point and the highest calorie content (70 kcal per biscuit).
The digestive biscuit ranked second in the study. While it had the lowest volume of crunch reduction (15%) of all four biscuits, it crumbled in three tests of its ability to absorb liquid and maintain structural integrity (saturation, dunk break point, and pragmatic dunk break point).
The shortie was ranked third because it only soaked up an average of 4 mL of tea during the three saturation tests. The rich tea was ranked fourth, even though it was the only biscuit that lost points because it broke during the dunk breakpoint test. However, the penalty points did not directly affect the rich tea’s ranking.
Researchers think that NHS workers can easily enjoy a cup of tea with a biscuit in less than 10 minutes, based on these results.
They also say that dunking biscuits in tea is good for cooling the tea and should be encouraged. When compared to the digestive, rich tea, and shortie, the oat biscuit was the best.
The authors recognize several research limitations, such as varied viewpoints on how to make a tasty cup of tea and a restricted biscuit selection, but they are sure that their approaches mirror a real-world approach to tea preparation in NHS staff rooms.
They also say that the fun of dunking a biscuit into a cup of tea made the tea break better and could be a key part of building a team and a sense of connection between people in different roles and fields.
Even though this study didn’t look at changes in staff morale and performance, the authors say, “Making time for a cup of tea is an important daily ritual, and it should be encouraged to help improve the mood and performance of healthcare workers.”
Source: 10.1136/bmj-2022-072839
Image Credit: Getty