Name: Lemon Tea
Ingredients: tea (remaining in the teapot); sugar (to taste); fresh lemon (1-2 slices); lemon juice (to taste); 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 a few lumps of sugar and stir until dissolved.
Add 1-2 slices of fresh lemon and a little lemon juice.
Top with cracked ice.
If the tea is too strong, add water to taste.

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

Tea: Provides the main body and bitter backbone of the drink.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tea's bitterness and the lemon's acidity.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the tea's bitterness.