Name: Flax Seed Tea
Ingredients: 5 ounces whole flax seed; 1 large lemon; 3 tablespoons white granulated sugar; 3 pints boiling water

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 ↓

Flax Seed Tea

Ingredients

5 ounces whole flax seed
1 large lemon
3 tablespoons white granulated sugar
3 pints boiling water

Directions

Prepare

Soak 5 ounces of flax seed in a bowl of cold water, then pour off any floating debris.
Strain the flax seed using a tin strainer.
Peel the yellow skin from the lemon and place it in a pitcher.
Add 3 tablespoons of sugar to the pitcher and stir.
Squeeze the lemon juice into the pitcher.

Steep and serve

Add the washed flax seed and 3 pints of boiling water, stirring occasionally.
Cover the pitcher with a folded napkin and let it cool before serving.

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

Flax seed: Releases mucilage into the water, giving the tea its slightly thick, soothing body.
Lemon: Adds acidity and aroma, brightening the flavour of the tea.
White granulated sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the lemon's tartness.

“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.