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 ↓
Tea Punch
Ingredients
Directions
Pour hot lemonade over tea leaves.
Let stand for 5 minutes.
Strain and chill.
Serve in a tall glass with a slice of lemon.
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 + lemontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Lemonade
- Forms the liquid base and supplies the sweetness and tart citrus flavour.
- Tea
- Adds aroma and tannins that give the punch its tea character and mild dryness.
The step that matters
Steeping time. Tea tannins keep extracting into hot liquid, so steeping longer than 5 minutes makes the punch bitter and astringent. Straining at the set time keeps the flavour balanced.
“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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