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Drink

Sage-tea

A brewed tea made from green sage leaves, sugar, lemon peel, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sage-tea

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine sage leaves, sugar, and lemon peel in a pot.

  2. Pour in boiling water and let it steep near the fire for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture 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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sage + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon 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

Green sage leaves
Provide the main herbal aroma and flavor that define the tea.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the slightly bitter, herbal taste of the sage.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and a touch of acidity to the infusion.

The step that matters

Steeping the mixture. Steeping extracts flavor from the sage and peel into the hot water. Steeping too long can draw out bitter, harsh compounds from sage, so the time matters for a smooth cup.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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