Name: Slippery-elm Tea
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon powdered slippery-elm; cold water; lemon; sugar

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Slippery-elm Tea

Ingredients

1 teaspoon powdered slippery-elm
cold water
lemon
sugar

Directions

Place the powdered slippery elm in a tumbler.
Pour cold water over it.
Add lemon and sugar to taste.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Slippery elm: Forms a thick, soothing mucilage that gives the tea its body when it hydrates in water.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the lemon and the earthy taste of the slippery elm.

“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.