Her recommendation to put salt in tea spurs outraged British headlines, a U.S. Embassy statement and a flood of attention for Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Chemistry professor Michelle Francl didn’t mean to create an international incident. But her recommendation to put a pinch of salt in tea—a tip offered in her new book, Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea—has stirred up enough tongue-in-cheek trans-Atlantic bitterness to revive references to the Boston Tea Party.