Name: Linseed Tea
Ingredients: 1 oz. whole linseed; 1 pint water; ½ oz. liquorice; 7½ oz. sugar candy; 1 strip lemon peel; juice of 1 lemon

Linseed Tea

Linseed tea is a beverage made by simmering linseed with water, lemon peel, liquorice, and sugar candy, then strained and finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Linseed Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the linseed.

Make the tea

Simmer the linseed with water and lemon peel for 30 minutes.
Add the liquorice and sugar candy, and stir until dissolved.
Strain the mixture and add the lemon juice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Linseed: Its mucilage thickens the water, giving the tea a soothing, slightly viscous body.
Sugar candy: Adds sweetness, balancing the earthy flavour of the linseed and liquorice.
Liquorice: Contributes a distinctive sweet, aromatic flavour to the infusion.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sweetened tea.

“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.