Name: Iced Russian Tea
Ingredients: 4 teaspoons tea; 4 cups boiling water; 4 slices lemon; 4 glasses filled with cracked ice; 4 lumps of sugar

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 ↓

Iced Russian Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Strain the tea leaves from the boiling water.
Place a slice of lemon and a lump of sugar in each glass filled with ice.
Pour the cold tea over the lemon and sugar in each glass.

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).
Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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 flavour and the tannins that give the drink its character.
Sugar: Sweetens the drink and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon: Adds acidity and a bright aroma to the tea.