Lynne, gypsy tart is made with evaporated milk and soft brown sugar, whisked together until thick before being baked in a pastry case, not condensed, which would have a different flavour.

The thing about why milk is or is not first is more likely to be part of the Victorian obsession with setting up irrational table "etiquette" purely in order for people of one class to make those of another feel excluded, than for any sensible reason like scalding the milk in hot regions (the Raj), or not scalding it by adding it first, so the taste did not change.

Tea strainers, the hemispherical punched metal "spoons" (most of the images on the net of old ones have two small handles and bowls to rest in, but ours always had a flat handle and a projection the other side so it could rest on the cup) used to be ubiquitous.

I remember reading a book about Jutish grave goods, in which women might be buried with something which looked for all the world like a tea strainer. The male author put forward the idea that the Jutes did not understand the purpose of spoons, and so made them useless by adding patterns of holes. Obviously he never took tea with his mother or aunts. What the Jutes were drinking cannot, of course have been proper tea.

Penny