Name: Linseed Tea
Ingredients: 1 ounce linseed; ½ ounce liquorice or sliced liquorice root; ½ lemon; castor sugar or sugar candy; 1 quart boiling water

Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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

Steep

Combine linseed, liquorice, and lemon in a jug.
Pour 1 quart of boiling water over the mixture.
Place the jug by the fire for 2 to 3 hours.

Finish and serve

Sweeten the tea with castor sugar or sugar candy.
Stir, strain through muslin, and warm before serving.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar 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

Linseed: Releases mucilage into the water, giving the tea a soothing, slightly thick body.
Liquorice root: Adds a sweet, earthy flavour that rounds out the tea.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Castor sugar or sugar candy: Adds sweetness to balance the sharp lemon and earthy liquorice.

“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.