Slippery-elm Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Make the tea
Toast the stale bread crusts until dark brown, being careful not to burn them.
Place the toasted crusts in a large pitcher and cover with boiling water.
Cover the pitcher tightly and let steep until cold.
Finish and serve
Strain the mixture and sweeten to taste.
Serve with a piece of ice in each glass.
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
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread crusts
- Toasted crusts give the tea a deep, roasted, toasty flavor and color as they steep.
- Boiling water
- Hot water extracts flavor and color from the toasted crusts during steeping.
The step that matters
Toasting the bread crusts. Toasting until dark brown develops roasted flavor through browning reactions, but burnt crusts add bitter, acrid notes that carry into the tea. Watch them closely and stop once they are deeply colored without being black.
“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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