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Drink

Cold Tea or Coffee

A chilled beverage made by steeping coffee or tea in water, then straining and optionally adding milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and tea work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 259 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Cold Tea or Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Combine 1 tablespoon of ground coffee with 1 cup of water in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture sit for at least 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a butter cloth or flannel.

Make the tea and serve

  1. For tea, combine 2 teaspoons of tea leaves with ½ cup of water.

  2. Let the tea sit for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the tea and add milk or cream if desired.

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. Coffee + teatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  2. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

  3. 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

Ground unroasted sun-dried coffee berries
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma as the water slowly extracts it.
Tea leaves
Adds a second layer of flavour and some astringent body to the drink.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and softens the bitter, astringent edge of the brew.

The step that matters

Letting the coffee sit for at least 30 minutes. Cold water extracts flavour slowly, so cutting the steep short leaves the drink weak and under-flavoured. Giving it the full time lets the grounds release their flavour before straining.

“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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