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Drink

Apple Tea or Water

A beverage made by steeping sliced apples and lemon peel in boiling water, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Tea or Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice large Pippin apples into thin bits.

  2. Cut a little of the peel from a fresh lemon and add it to the apples.

Steep and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a pitcher and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Cover closely and let it stand near the fire for several hours.

  3. Pour into glasses and sweeten with loaf sugar.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Pippin apples
Their flesh and juice provide the main fruity flavour and body of the infusion.
Lemon peel
Its aromatic oils add a bright, citrusy aroma to the steeped liquid.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the tartness of the apples and lemon.

The step that matters

Cover closely while steeping. Covering the pitcher keeps the volatile aroma compounds from the lemon peel and apples from escaping with the steam, so the tea tastes fragrant rather than flat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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