A hushed, honeyed steep where chamomile's apple-soft calm meets lavender's floral drift, threaded with the sweet licorice warmth of star anise. It is built for the hour the day loosens its grip, a cup that quiets the nerves and coaxes the body toward sleep.
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4 compounds carry this recipe. Here is what each one does and, where we have it, what it actually looks like.
Chamomile's signature flavone binds gently at the brain's benzodiazepine sites, easing anxiety and setting the tea's drowsy, unwinding tone.
A mellow, faintly sweet terpene alcohol from chamomile that smooths the aroma and lends the cup its gentle, settling character.
The floral heart of lavender; it eases the nervous system and carries most of the steep's calming, sleep-drawing scent.
The warm anise-licorice principle of star anise, rounding the florals with a soft sweetness that keeps the cup comforting rather than sharp.
This recipe is part of a set: follow the thread through the blends it uses and what it's served with.
Water is the most-used ingredient in this index, in twenty-nine of thirty-nine recipes and in every single tea, and it is the one nobody writes down. In the 1990s a chemist at Imperial College spent four papers on the film it leaves on the surface of a cup, and almost everything people assume about that film turned out to be wrong.
Sweet taste runs through a single receptor that will accept a sugar, a protein or a synthetic molecule with equal enthusiasm. Which is how anise tastes sweet with no sugar in it. The famous number attached to that fact, though, traces back to an uncited sentence, and the measurement behind it could not have been made.
Star anise was once the world's main industrial source of shikimic acid, the starting material for Tamiflu. It does not follow that star anise treats flu, and there is a poisonous look-alike worth knowing about.
