Name: Apple Tea for the Sick
Ingredients: 1 pound apples; 1 quart water; juice of 1 lemon; sweetener to taste

Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Tea for the Sick

Ingredients

1 pound apples
1 quart water
juice of 1 lemon
sweetener to taste

Directions

Make the tea

Peel, core, and quarter the apples.
Boil the apples in water for 30 minutes.
Strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

Add lemon juice and sweeten 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.

Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the main flavor and fruity sweetness that infuse into the water as they simmer.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor and balances the sweetness.

“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.