Why it works: Green tea and black tea share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
How to Make Tea
six servingsIngredients
Directions
Prepare the green tea
Scald your teapot for six servings.
Add 3 teaspoons of green tea. Pour a little boiling water over it. Let it steep.
Make the black tea
In a tin cup, combine 4 teaspoons of black tea with cold water. Cover tightly.
Bring the black tea mixture to a quick boil. Let it boil for 1 minute.
Combine and serve
Add the boiled black tea to the steeped green tea.
Ensure the green tea does not boil. Fill up with the necessary amount of boiling water. Serve.
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.
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Green tea + black teatop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together11 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Green tea
- Provides the delicate, grassy aroma and light flavor that forms the base of the brew.
- Black tea
- Adds a stronger, more robust body and astringency that balances the lighter green tea.
The step that matters
Ensure the green tea does not boil. Green tea leaves are delicate. Boiling or long, hot steeping extracts bitter compounds and dulls the fresh aroma, so the green tea should stay below a boil while the black tea is added.
“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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