奶茶 中文

Free milk tea from Black & White at 100 cha chaan tengs, weekdays until 30 November. Which shop, which day →

The Hong Kong Milk Tea Handbook · hkstylemilktea.com/yuenyeung/

鴛鴦 Yuenyeung · Coffee + Milk Tea

How to make yuenyeung

Coffee and milk tea in one cup: a pairing nobody would design on paper. The tea gives it body, the coffee gives it a bitter edge, and almost every cha chaan teng will make you one, whether or not it's on the menu.

  • Prep 5 min
  • Cook 20 min
  • Ready in about 25 min
  • Serves 2
  • Per cup about 105 calories with 2 tsp sugar

The recipe

You need

Ingredients

  • Black tea blend20 g
  • Water, freshly boiled400 ml
  • Strong coffee: espresso, moka pot or strong drip150 ml
  • Evaporated milk, unsweetened100 ml
  • Sugar, to taste, at the table2 tsp a cup
The ratio

Three parts coffee to seven parts milk tea is the usual starting point. The South China Morning Post calls it the main version and says it varies with the tea and coffee. In 2003 the government's tea ware museum described yuenyeung as half coffee and half milk tea. Start at 3:7 and move towards half-and-half if you want more coffee.

Equipment

The tea gear from the milk tea recipe: a cotton tea sock or a lined sieve, and two heatproof pots. Plus whatever you make strong coffee with. No machine? Two teaspoons of instant coffee in 150 ml of just-boiled water will do.

Method

About 25 minutes

  1. Brew the tea strong. Follow the milk tea method with a little more tea: 20 g of tea in 400 ml of water, a hard 3-minute boil, four pulls, 12 minutes covered, two more pulls. You should have about 300 ml.
  2. Make the coffee strong. Brew 150 ml: espresso topped up with hot water, a moka pot, or drip coffee made with twice the usual grounds.
  3. Milk in the cup first. Put 50 ml of evaporated milk in each warmed cup.
  4. Tea, then coffee. Pour 125 ml of tea onto the milk in each cup, then 75 ml of coffee, from a little height, and stir. That's three parts coffee to seven parts milk tea.
  5. Sugar at the table, then taste. Too bitter: more tea next time. Too soft: more coffee.
Iced yuenyeung

For 凍鴛鴦, sweeten the tea and coffee while they're hot, chill them fast in an ice bath, and keep the ice outside the glass, as on the iced milk tea page.

Printed from hkstylemilktea.com/yuenyeung/ — the full page covers the name, the caffeine and who may have mixed it first.

The name

Why it's called mandarin ducks

鴛鴦, jyun1 joeng1, is the mandarin duck: 鴛 is the male, 鴦 the female, and the two look completely different. In Chinese the pair stands for a couple, and in Cantonese the word also covers any two unlike things put together, like 鴛鴦炒飯, fried rice under two different sauces. The drink is the most famous example. In English you'll see it spelt yuenyeung, yuanyang, yuen yeung or yin yeung.

Off the menu

It often isn't written up anywhere, but nearly every cha chaan teng serves it. Just ask.

In a museum

In 2003 the government's Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware named an exhibition after it: "Yuanyang", coffee and tea vessels by 46 Hong Kong artists.

Caffeine

Nobody has measured yuenyeung itself. In a 2013 test, Hong Kong milk tea averaged 170 mg of caffeine a cup and coffee 200 mg, so expect a yuenyeung to land around there. The Centre for Food Safety advises that children shouldn't drink coffee or milk tea.

Origins

Who mixed it first

Nobody can prove it. It grew up in the dai pai dong and cha chaan teng, nobody recorded who poured the first one, and the two named claims don't agree.

1952

Lan Fong Yuen's claim

Lan Fong Yuen 蘭芳園, the Central stall that also claims the cotton tea sock, says it created yuenyeung in 1952.

About 1955

Simon Wong's account

Simon Wong Ka-wo 黃家和, chairman of the Association of Coffee and Tea of Hong Kong, says it appeared around 1955 at Hoi On Café. His story is that customers found milk tea hard on the stomach and coffee too "heating", so the two were mixed for balance.

A cousin in Malaysia and Singapore

Kopitiam coffee shops in Malaysia serve a similar mix called "cham": at its simplest, equal parts coffee and tea, sweetened with condensed milk, though many shops use more tea. In Singapore it also goes by yuan yang.

More cha chaan teng drinks in the glossary →

Sources