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Drink

Iced Tea

A chilled beverage made by steeping black tea in cold water, sweetened with sugar, flavored with lemon, and served over cracked ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Iced Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea

  1. Stir the black tea into the cold water.

  2. Let it stand for 5 to 6 hours.

Serve

  1. Strain the tea and serve in glasses.

  2. Add sugar and lemon slices, and top with cracked ice.

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.

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

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

  2. Black tea + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

  3. Black tea + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together113 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

Black tea
Provides the main flavour and tannins that give iced tea its character.
Cold water
Slowly extracts flavour from the tea leaves without the bitterness of hot brewing.

The step that matters

Letting the tea stand. Steeping in cold water for 5 to 6 hours draws out flavour gradually. Stopping early leaves the tea weak, while steeping much longer can make it taste more bitter and astringent.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black tea, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against black 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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