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A Refreshing Drink in a Fever

A herbal tea made with tea sage, balm, wood sorrel, lemon, and sugar, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Refreshing Drink in a Fever

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the tea sage, balm, and wood sorrel.

  2. Peel the lemon thinly, removing the white pith, and slice it.

Infuse

  1. Add a piece of lemon peel to the herbs in a stone jug.

  2. Pour in 3 pints of boiling water.

  3. Sweeten to taste and cover the jug.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sage + sorreltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tea + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma, with the peel releasing fragrant oils into the infusion.
Tea sage
Provides the main herbal flavour and aroma as the leaves steep in hot water.
Balm
Contributes a light lemony aroma and fresh herbal flavour to the infusion.
Wood sorrel
Adds a tart, sour flavour that brightens the infusion.

Swap the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, sage, lemon, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, sage, lemon, sugar. 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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