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Drink

Iced Tea

Iced tea is brewed tea served over cracked ice, optionally sweetened with sugar and topped with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Iced Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Brew

  1. Steep the tea until well infused.

  2. Strain the tea through cheesecloth into a stone or earthen vessel.

  3. Let it cool.

Serve

  1. Serve over cracked ice, adding sugar and cream 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Tea + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Tea + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,204 recipes

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

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, along with tannins that add dryness and astringency as it steeps.
Cracked ice
Chills the tea quickly and dilutes it slightly as it melts.

The step that matters

Steep the tea until well infused. Tannins and other compounds keep extracting from the leaves the longer they steep. Steeping too long makes the tea bitter and astringent, so stop once the flavor is full but before it turns 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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