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Drink

Iced Tea

A chilled beverage made from strong brewed tea, sugar, lemon, ice, and garnished with grape leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Iced Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea

  1. Brew tea stronger and sweeter than usual.

  2. Strain the tea and pour it into a clean jug or glass bottle.

  3. Chill the tea in the ice chest until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Add sugar, lemon slices, and a little lemon juice to taste before serving.

  2. Serve in goblets without cream, garnished with cracked ice and grape leaves.

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

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

  2. Tea + grapetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together156 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + grapetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Strong brewed tea
Provides the main flavor and the tannins that give iced tea its body and bite.
Sugar
Sweetens the tea and balances the tannin bitterness of the strong brew.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and softens the tea's bitterness.

The step that matters

Brew tea stronger and sweeter than usual.. Chilling and diluting with melting ice mutes both flavor and sweetness, so the tea must start stronger than normal to taste right when served.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, sugar, lemon. 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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