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Drink

Iceland Moss Tea

A tea made by soaking and boiling Iceland moss, served with cream or milk and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Iceland Moss Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the moss in 1 quart of cold water overnight.

Make the tea

  1. Boil the soaked moss in the same water for 30 minutes after it starts boiling.

  2. Strain the mixture through a linen cloth.

Serve

  1. Serve the tea with cream and sugar or milk and sugar, according 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.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Moss
Its polysaccharides dissolve into the hot water, giving the tea body and a slightly thick texture.
Cream or milk
Adds fat and richness, softening the tea's flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tea's earthy taste.

The step that matters

Boiling the moss for the full 30 minutes. The 30 minutes counts only from when the water starts boiling, so the moss needs that full simmer to release its dissolved compounds into the water. Cutting it short leaves the tea weaker and thinner.

“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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