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A Good Drink in Fever

A warm barley drink with lemon syrup, capillaire, egg, milk, and nutmeg for fever.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Good Drink in Fever

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash the barley and put it in 3 pints of water.

  2. Boil the barley well.

  3. Add the lemon syrup and capillaire to the boiled barley.

Make the egg and milk mixture

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the fresh egg.

  2. Mix the beaten egg with the warmed milk, capillaire, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Warm the mixture slightly before adding the egg.

Serve

  1. Drink this first and last thing.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  4. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Barley
Gives the drink its body and a mild, starchy base once boiled.
Fresh egg
Adds richness and body, and thickens slightly when gently warmed.
New milk
Adds creaminess and softness, balancing the sharper lemon flavour.
Lemon syrup
Adds sweetness and bright citrus acidity to the barley liquid.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, syrup, egg, milk, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, syrup, egg, milk, nutmeg. 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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