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Drink

Green Tea

A simple hot or iced green tea made by steeping tea leaves in boiling water and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Green Tea

Why it works: Green tea and lemon work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Green Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Brew

  1. Scald the teapot with boiling water.

  2. Add ½ pint of boiling water to 2 teaspoons of green tea.

  3. Let it steep for 15 to 20 minutes, then add more boiling water to reach desired strength.

  4. For iced tea, prepare a quart by adding 1 quart of boiling water to 2 teaspoons of green tea.

  5. Strain the tea into a pitcher without stirring and let it cool.

Serve

  1. Fill goblets with ice, add 2 teaspoons of sugar to each, and pour the tea over the ice and sugar.

  2. Add a squeeze of lemon for extra flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

  1. Green tea + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Green tea + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together159 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

Green tea
Provides the main flavor and bitter, grassy character of the drink.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tea's natural bitterness.

The step that matters

Steeping time and strength. Green tea leaves turn bitter when steeped too long or in water that is too hot, so timing matters. Steeping for 15 to 20 minutes is long and can make the tea harsh. Adding more water afterward adjusts strength without over-extracting the leaves.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (green tea, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Pineapplefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against green tea, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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