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Cough Syrup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginseng and anise share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cough Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bruise the herbs and roots and cover them with spirits or whisky. Let them stand for ten days.

  2. In a suitable vessel, add 4 quarts of water to the mixture and simmer slowly over a fire for twelve hours, without boiling.

  3. Reduce the mixture to about 3 pints, then strain it.

  4. Add 1 pint of strained honey, ½ pint each of tincture lobelia and tincture bloodroot, and 4 ounces of strong essence of anise.

  5. Mix well to create the cough syrup.

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. Ginseng + anisetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Honey + anisetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cabbage + anisetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9 recipes

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

  4. Ginseng + cabbagetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + honeytop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexan-1-ol (green, grassy).

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginseng, honey, anise):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Welsh onionfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginseng, honey, anise. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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