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Drink

To Make Tea

A hot beverage made by steeping tea leaves in boiling water, sweetened with sugar and optionally flavored with cream, milk, or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tea

  1. Boil the cold water in a kettle.

  2. Once boiling, rinse an earthenware teapot with boiling water.

  3. Add 2 large teaspoons of tea to the teapot.

  4. Pour ½ cup of boiling water over the tea slowly.

Steep and serve

  1. Cover the teapot with a lid.

  2. Let it steep for exactly 5 minutes.

  3. Stir the tea with a silver teaspoon.

  4. Let it settle for 5 to 6 minutes.

  5. Put sugar into your cup.

  6. Pour the tea into the cup.

  7. Add cream, milk, or lemon juice as desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Tea + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,204 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

Tea
Provides the main flavour and aroma as its compounds dissolve into the hot water.
Water
Extracts the tea's flavour compounds and forms the drink's body.

The step that matters

Let it steep for exactly 5 minutes. Steeping too briefly leaves the tea weak and pale, while steeping too long draws out bitter tannins. Timing controls the balance of flavour and astringency.

“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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