A simple infusion of green tea leaves imported from the East Indies, drunk clear and hot. At the time, tea was rare, expensive, almost medicinal — a drink for the literate and wealthy, ideal for keeping the mind alert late into the night.

Why this dish? It is reported that Newton, abstemious, drank little wine and preferred water or tea — then a novel beverage spreading across late 17th-century England. The steaming cup set beside manuscripts, quill in hand, is the very image of the scholar working late into the night on his calculations.

I make little account of wine, which clouds the understanding; but this leaf from China, infused in boiling water, keeps the mind clear and the hand steady. I take a cup when the candle burns low and the calculations still resist. Let the leaves unfold in the simmering water for the space of a short prayer, then pour without drowning them in sugar: it is the very bitterness that awakens attention. Many a night it has kept me company while the rest of the house slept.

How it was made : Tea arrived in England in the mid-17th century and was first sold in London coffee-houses as an expensive curiosity, almost a remedy. It was often drunk without milk at that time; the systematic addition of milk and sugar became common later. For a scholar of the Royal Society, it was the modern beverage par excellence.

The contemporary twist : Serve it in a small white porcelain cup placed on an old open book: the physicist's 'tea-time' between two equations.

Isaac Newton · Charactorium