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Drink

Lemon Verbena Beverage

A chilled beverage made by steeping lemon verbena leaves in hot water, then adding orange juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lemon Verbena Beverage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Steep fresh lemon verbena leaves in hot water for several minutes.

  2. Cover the vessel and let it cool.

  3. Add concentrated orange juice shortly before serving and stir well.

  4. Sweeten to taste and serve chilled.

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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon verbena + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon verbena + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Fresh lemon verbena leaves
Provide the main lemon aroma and flavour as they steep in the hot water.
Concentrated orange juice
Adds bright citrus acidity and fruity flavour to the tea.

Swap the lemon verbena

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Lemon verbenathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, 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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