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Drink

Iced Tea or Coffee

A chilled beverage made by pouring hot tea or coffee over cracked ice, served with sugar and lemon slices or whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Tea or Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fill glasses with cracked ice.

  2. Pour scalding hot tea or coffee over the ice.

  3. Serve tea with sugar and slices of lemon.

  4. Serve coffee with sugar and whipped cream.

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. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Tea + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Cracked ice
Chills the hot liquid quickly and dilutes it slightly as it melts.
Hot tea or coffee
Provides the main flavor and is cooled rapidly by the ice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the tea or coffee.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma to the tea.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and fat that softens the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Pour scalding hot tea or coffee over the ice. Pouring hot liquid directly over ice chills it fast, which helps keep tea clear and limits watering down. Pouring slowly lets the ice cool the liquid evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, sugar, cream. 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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