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Drink

A Good Drink for the Lungs

A soothing beverage made by steeping Irish moss in boiling water, then adding lemon juice and sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Irish moss and lemon work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Good Drink for the Lungs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the Irish moss thoroughly.

  2. Place the moss in a pitcher and pour boiling water over it.

Make the tea

  1. Keep the mixture at boiling point for 2 hours without boiling.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Finish

  1. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

  2. Sweeten to taste.

  3. Add optional flavorings 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. Irish moss + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Irish moss + winetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Irish moss
Releases gel-forming compounds that thicken the liquid into a light, silky body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances sweetness.
Sweetener
Adds sweetness to offset the tartness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Keeping the mixture at boiling point for 2 hours. Heat must stay at the point where the mixture is hot and steaming without a hard, rolling boil. Gentle, sustained heat draws the gel-forming compounds out of the moss slowly, while a hard boil can break them down and weaken the thickening.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (irish moss, wine):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Peachfits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against irish moss, wine. 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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