Why it works: Tea and cream work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 463 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓
To Make Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Scald an earthen teapot with hot water.
Add the desired amount of tea leaves to the pot.
Pour boiling water over the tea leaves to cover them.
Steep and serve
Let the tea steep for 10 minutes with the lid on.
Do not let the tea boil.
Pour in additional boiling water as desired.
Serve the tea and add cold cream if desired.
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.
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Tea + creamtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together463 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tea leaves
- Provide the main flavour and aroma as they steep in the water.
- Boiling water
- Extracts flavour from the tea leaves when it steeps them.
The step that matters
Do not let the tea boil. Boiling water over-extracts tea, which can make it taste bitter and astringent. Keeping the water just below boiling and steeping with the lid on gives a smoother, more balanced cup.
“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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