Name: Bran Tea
Ingredients: 1 tea-cupful fresh bran (about ½ cup); 1 quart boiling water (4 cups); 1 ounce pure gum; Honey to taste

Why it works: Tea and honey work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 103 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Bran Tea

Ingredients

1 tea-cupful fresh bran (about ½ cup)
1 quart boiling water (4 cups)
1 ounce pure gum
Honey to taste

Directions

Place the bran in a clean saucepan.
Pour boiling water over the bran while stirring continuously.
Boil for a few minutes, then strain through a fine sieve.
Dissolve the gum in the strained liquid.
Sweeten with honey and transfer to an earthen teapot.
Keep warm by the fire and drink moderately warm.

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.

Tea + honeytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together103 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh bran: Gives the tea its body and flavour as it steeps in the hot water.
Pure gum: Dissolves into the liquid to add thickness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Honey: Adds sweetness to balance the earthy flavour of the bran.

“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.