“…The debates over blending, brewing, the merits or harms of tannins, and the market that I have described in this article underscore that scientific investigation of the chemical components of industrial processes, from field to factory to infused cups, cannot be divorced from that history. The story of how tannins shaped and were shaped by normative understandings of taste and value is indicative of a kind of process that scholars of science, technology, and capital have documented elsewhere: in the determination of acceptable levels of chemical exposure in homes, factory farms and offices (Liboiron et al, 2018; Murphy, 2006; Nash, 2007; Shapiro, 2015), the rise of the calorie as the measure of food’s nutritional impact (Biltekoff, 2013; Guthman, 2011), and the purification of Caribbean sugar through automation (Singerman, 2017). Imperial science thus helped stabilize dominant forms of production and consumption such as the mixing of tannic black tea with milk.…”