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Drink

Black-currant Tea

A tea made by steeping black‑currant jam, lemon juice, and sugar in boiling water, served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Black-currant Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put the jam, sugar, and lemon juice into a jug.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and stir well.

Steep and serve

  1. Cover with a plate or saucer and let it stand by the fire for about 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Strain and serve hot as a remedy for a cold, or allow it to cool and serve as a beverage.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Black-currant jam
Provides the fruit flavour and most of the sweetness in the tea.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruity flavour and balances the sweetness.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves quickly in the hot water.
Boiling water
Dissolves the jam and sugar and draws out flavour during steeping.

The step that matters

Covering the jug while it stands. Covering keeps the heat in so the water stays hot and extracts flavour from the jam and lemon juice. Uncovered, the tea cools faster and tastes weaker.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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