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Drink

English Tea

A tea brewed with English Breakfast black tea, served hot or iced with optional lemon, mint, or ginger syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

English Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Brew the tea

  1. Boil water and pour a little into the teapot, then discard it.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of tea for every 2 people.

  3. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the tea and let it steep for a few minutes without boiling.

Make iced tea

  1. For iced tea, pour freshly brewed tea over a large lump of ice in glasses half filled with shaved ice.

  2. Alternatively, brew strong tea hours in advance, cool it, and refrigerate.

  3. Before serving, dilute with iced water to desired strength.

Add flavorings

  1. If using lemon, grate the rind and pour hot tea over it, or serve lemon in lengthwise sections.

  2. Add mint leaves or lemon verbena for extra flavor, and ginger syrup if desired.

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.

  1. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Black tea + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

English breakfast black tea
Provides the main flavor and astringency, and its strength depends on steeping time.
Boiling water
Extracts flavor from the tea leaves when poured over them and kept just off the boil.
Ice
Chills the brewed tea quickly for serving without needing to dilute it too much.

The step that matters

Pour boiling water over the tea and steep without boiling. Water near boiling extracts flavor well, but boiling the tea itself can make it bitter. Steeping for a few minutes without boiling keeps the brew balanced.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black tea, mint, ginger, syrup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against black tea, mint, ginger, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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