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Drink

Tea and Coffee Making

A method for preparing tea and coffee using boiling water, loose tea, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Tea and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,204 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tea and Coffee Making

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Use a stoneware teapot if possible; otherwise, a metal pot is acceptable.

  2. Pour boiling water into the teapot to heat it, then empty the pot.

Make the tea

  1. Boil water and let it boil for no more than one minute.

  2. Add the tea and sugar to the pot, using 1 teaspoon of tea per person plus 1 extra teaspoon.

  3. If making a large quantity, use two or three pots instead of one large pot.

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 + 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

Loose tea
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the brew.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tea's bitterness.

“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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