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Drink

Slippery-elm Tea

A tea made by steeping toasted stale bread crusts in boiling water, sweetened and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Slippery-elm Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea

  1. Toast the stale bread crusts until dark brown, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Place the toasted crusts in a large pitcher and cover with boiling water.

  3. Cover the pitcher tightly and let steep until cold.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and sweeten to taste.

  2. Serve with a piece of ice in each glass.

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

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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