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Drink

Rose-leaf Tea

A tea made by infusing dried rose petals in milk or water, optionally colored with saffron or cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and saffron work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rose-leaf Tea

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Infuse the dried rose petals in ½ cup of milk or water.

  2. If desired, add a pinch of saffron or a few drops of tincture of cochineal for color.

  3. Strain and serve warm.

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. Rose + saffrontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + saffrontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Rose + milktop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,249 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried rose petals
Provide the rose flavor and aroma that the infusion carries into the liquid.
Milk or water
Serves as the liquid that extracts flavor from the petals and forms the tea.
Saffron
Adds a yellow color and a subtle floral aroma to the tea.

Swap the saffron

The recipe marks saffron as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rose, milk):

  1. Saffronthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Macefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rose, milk. 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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