Why it works: Tea and cream work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 463 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓
To Make Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Scald an earthen teapot with hot water.
Add the desired amount of tea leaves to the pot.
Pour enough boiling water over the tea leaves to cover them.
Steep and serve
Cover the pot and let it steep for 10 minutes without boiling.
Add more boiling water to the pot as desired.
Serve the tea and add cold cream if desired.
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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Tea + creamtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together463 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tea leaves
- Provide the main flavour and aroma as hot water extracts their compounds during steeping.
The step that matters
Steep without boiling. Tea leaves release flavour gradually in water just below boiling. Boiling the leaves can extract bitter compounds and make the tea taste harsh.
“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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