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Liver Bitters

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Dandelion and rhubarb share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Liver Bitters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put hops, buchu leaves, dandelion root, mandrake root, rhubarb root, and juniper berries in a stone jar.

  2. Pour 4 quarts of hot water over the mixture and cover it.

  3. Let it stand on the stove for 24 hours without boiling.

  4. Evaporate the mixture to about 2 quarts.

  5. Strain the liquid and let it cool.

  6. Add the alcohol and mix well.

  7. Bottle tightly and shake well before use.

  8. For chills, take 3 tablespoons within an hour on the day of the chill.

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. Dandelion + rhubarbtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Dandelion + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Hops + buchutop 47% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, buchu, dandelion, sugar):

  1. Gingerfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Rhubarbthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, buchu, dandelion, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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