Name: Lemon-peel Tea
Ingredients: 1 lemon; ½ ounce lump sugar; 4 cups boiling water; 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon-peel Tea

Ingredients

1 lemon
½ ounce lump sugar
4 cups boiling water
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

Rub the lemon with the lump sugar and pare the rind thinly.
Place the peelings and sugar in a jug and pour boiling water over them.
Let the mixture cool, then decant the liquid.
Add the lemon juice to the liquid and stir.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Lemon rind: Supplies the aromatic oils that give the tea its lemon fragrance and flavour.
Lump sugar: Sweetens the tea and helps draw oils from the rind when rubbed.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the tea.

“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.