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Drink

Iced Tea

A chilled tea beverage prepared by steeping loose tea in cold water, then adding boiling water and serving with ice and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tea and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 610 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Iced Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the tea in cold water several hours before serving.

  2. Prepare the tea before dinner time.

  3. Add ice before serving.

Brew and serve

  1. Add 1 teaspoon of tea per person to a teapot.

  2. Pour boiling water over the tea.

  3. Cover the teapot tightly.

  4. Let it steep in a warm place for a few minutes without boiling.

  5. Add more boiling water as needed before serving.

  6. Serve with a slice of lemon and a piece of ice in each glass.

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

Loose tea
Releases flavor, color and aroma into the water as it steeps.
Ice
Chills the drink and slowly dilutes it as it melts.

The step that matters

Let it steep without boiling. Boiling the tea leaves extracts more bitter tannins and can make the tea taste harsh and look cloudy. Steeping in hot but not boiling water gives a smoother, clearer flavor.

“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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