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Refreshing Drinks in a Fever

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

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 ↓

Refreshing Drinks in a Fever

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Peel the lemon thinly, slice it, and add a piece of the peel to the jug.

  3. Pour in the boiling water, sweeten to taste, and cover the jug tightly.

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

Tea-sage
Provides the main herbal aroma and flavour of the infusion.
Balm
Adds a light, lemony herbal aroma to the infusion.
Wood-sorrel
Contributes a sharp, sour flavour to the infusion.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrant citrus oils from the peel.

The step that matters

Cover the jug tightly. Aromatic oils are volatile and escape with steam, so a tight cover keeps the herbal and citrus aromas in the infused water.

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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