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Drink

Linseed Tea

Linseed tea is a beverage made by simmering linseed, sugar, and lemon rind in boiling water, then adding lemon juice and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Linseed Tea

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

  1. Put the linseed, sugar, and lemon rind into a saucepan.

  2. Add the boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the lemon juice and strain the tea into a glass or jug.

  4. Serve when cold.

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.

  1. 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

Whole linseed
Its soluble mucilage thickens the water, giving the tea a soft, slightly viscous body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tart lemon and the mild, earthy flavour of the seed.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the sweetness of the tea.
Lemon rind
Its oils add a fragrant citrus aroma to the hot liquid as it steeps.

The step that matters

Simmer the linseed for 20 minutes. Gentle simmering with the seeds in water gives the mucilage time to dissolve out of the coat, which creates the tea's body. Cutting the time short leaves the tea thin.

“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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