Name: Tea a LA Russe
Ingredients: fresh lemons; white sugar; hot strong tea

Why it works: Lemon and tea 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 ↓

Tea a LA Russe

Ingredients

fresh lemons
white sugar
hot strong tea

Directions

Pare and slice fresh lemons.
Place a piece of lemon in the bottom of each cup.
Sprinkle with white sugar.
Pour hot, strong tea over the lemon.

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 + teatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together610 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,204 recipes

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

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

Fresh lemons: Adds bright acidity and a fresh citrus aroma that cuts the sweetness of the tea.
White sugar: Sweetens the tea and softens the sharpness of the lemon.
Hot strong tea: Provides the main liquid and the bitter, tannic base flavour of the drink.