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Drink in Fever

Do not give these drinks in typhoid fever without the doctor’s permission.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Drink in Fever

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dilute raspberry vinegar with water.

  2. Chop up apple and rhubarb.

  3. Pour boiling water over the chopped fruits.

  4. Add lemon and sugar to taste.

  5. Allow the mixture to cool 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.

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. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Raspberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  3. Raspberry + appletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + rhubarbtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Raspberry + rhubarbtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raspberry, vinegar, apple, rhubarb, sugar):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, vinegar, apple, rhubarb, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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