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Drink

To Make Tea

A simple hot tea prepared by steeping tea leaves in freshly boiled water and adding milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Tea and milk work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 738 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

To Make Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Heat the teapot with boiling water.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of tea for each person.

Brew and serve

  1. Pour freshly boiled water over the tea.

  2. Let it steep for 3 to 4 minutes.

  3. Pour milk into cups before adding tea.

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. Tea + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Tea
Provides the main flavour and aroma as its compounds dissolve into the hot water.
Freshly boiled water
Extracts flavour and colour from the tea leaves during steeping.
Milk
Softens the astringency of the tea and adds a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Steeping time. Steeping too long releases more tannins from the tea leaves, making the brew bitter and astringent. Steeping too briefly leaves it weak and thin. Timing controls the balance of flavour.

“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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