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Drink

Flax Seed Tea

A beverage made from flax seeds, lemon, sugar, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

Directions

Clean the flax seed

  1. Put flax seed into a bowl half full of cold water and stir the mixture.

  2. Pour off what floats on top.

  3. Pour the flax seed into a tin strainer.

Make the flavouring

  1. Peel the yellow skin of the lemon thinly.

  2. Place the peeled skin in a pitcher.

  3. Add sugar to the pitcher and stir together.

  4. Squeeze the lemon juice into the pitcher.

Steep and serve

  1. Add the washed flax seed and boiling water.

  2. Stir occasionally.

  3. Cover the pitcher with a folded napkin.

  4. 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.

  1. 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 a light, slightly thick body.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity and its peel adds bright citrus aroma.
White granulated sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sourness of the lemon.

“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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