Name: Balm Tea
Ingredients: 1 handful of balm; 1 pint of boiling water; Lemon juice to taste; Sugar to taste

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Balm Tea

Ingredients

1 handful of balm
1 pint of boiling water
Lemon juice to taste
Sugar to taste

Directions

Infuse

Pick and wash a handful of balm.
Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the balm.
Let it stand for 10 to 15 minutes.

Strain and sweeten

Strain the mixture.
Add lemon juice and sugar to taste.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Balm: Provides the main lemony, aromatic flavour that the water draws out.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the tea and balances the sweetness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the lemon juice.

“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.