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Drink

English Tea

A sweetened tea with eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, and optional arrack and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

English Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea

  1. Infuse ¼ ounce of tea in 1½ pints of water.

  2. Add a little vanilla and cinnamon.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth into an urn holding 6 to 8 quarts.

Combine and serve

  1. Beat 8 eggs and 6 yolks with ¾ pound of powdered sugar.

  2. Pour the egg mixture onto the tea and stir until it foams.

  3. Pour into cups and serve.

  4. If desired, add arrack and the zest of 2 lemons mixed with sugar to taste.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tea + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Whites and yolks coagulate and foam when stirred into the hot tea, giving body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsifying fat, giving the drink a smooth, creamy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves easily into the beaten eggs.
Tea
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the drink.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture onto the tea and stir until it foams. The egg mixture must be added to hot tea gradually while stirring so the eggs warm and blend smoothly instead of scrambling. Stirring also incorporates air, which creates the foam.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, vanilla, cinnamon, egg, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, vanilla, cinnamon, egg, sugar. 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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