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 ↓
To Make Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Make the tea
Scald the teapot and let it sit for about 10 minutes.
Discard the water, add the tea to the hot pot, and pour in half of the boiling water.
Cover the pot and let it steep on the back of the stove for 5 minutes.
Add the remaining boiling water and serve immediately.
Serve
For Russian tea, place a slice of lemon in each cup before pouring the tea.
Add a preserved strawberry and garnish with a candied cherry for an improvement.
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.
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Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together610 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Loose tea
- Provides the main flavor and aroma as it steeps in the hot water.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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