Name: Lemon Tea
Ingredients: remaining tea from the teapot; sugar, to taste; 1-2 slices of fresh lemon; juice of 1 lemon; cracked ice; water, if needed

Why it works: Tea and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 610 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Pour the remaining tea from the teapot into a glass.
Add sugar to taste.
Add 1-2 slices of fresh lemon and the juice of 1 lemon.
Stir in cracked ice.
If the tea is too strong, add water to dilute.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together610 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Tea + sugartop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,204 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemon: Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness and tea's bitterness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the lemon and the bitterness of the tea.