Name: Bulgarian Tea
Ingredients: 6 lemons; 1 can pineapple chunks; 1 gallon tea; 2 cups sugar (or more if using 1 quart strawberries); 6 oranges, sliced; 1 bottle maraschino cherries with juice

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Bulgarian Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Boil lemon rinds, sugar, and 1 pint water to make a syrup.

Combine and serve

Add the syrup to the tea.
If the tea is too strong, add more water.
Serve chilled at afternoon tea.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Lemon + teatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together610 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together333 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,964 recipes

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