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Drink

Russian Tea

A chilled black tea sweetened with sugar and lemon, served over ice.

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

Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Russian Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea

  1. Pour boiling water over black tea in a large container.

  2. Add sugar and lemon juice, then let it stand for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Serve

  1. Add a large piece of ice before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Black tea + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

  3. Black tea + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together113 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

Black tea
Provides the tannins and flavour that form the base of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that cuts through the sweetness.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against black tea, 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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