Name: Cold Tea
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons tea; 6 tablespoons sugar; 1 pint water; juice of 1.5 lemons

Why it works: Tea and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 610 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cold Tea

Ingredients

3 tablespoons tea
6 tablespoons sugar
1 pint water
juice of 1.5 lemons

Directions

Make the tea

Steep the tea in water overnight.
In the morning, strain the tea and add lemon juice and sugar.
Let it sit for another hour, then strain again.

Serve

Serve over cracked ice in small soda glasses.

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.

Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together610 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Tea + sugartop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,204 recipes

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

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

Tea: Provides the main flavor and the tannins that give iced tea its body.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon and tea.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.