Skip to main content

Physic for Horses

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Syrup and molasses work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 272 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Physic for Horses

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the Castile soap, Barbadoes aloes, powdered ginger, and oil of aniseseed with enough syrup to form a dough.

  2. Shape the mixture into 6 balls.

  3. For the second mixture, combine calomel, sulphur, and corn meal.

  4. Let the horse lick the mixture from a pan to avoid waste.

  5. In 24 hours, drench the horse with melted lard, warm sweet milk, molasses, and pulverized copperas.

  6. Repeat the drench in 10 days and keep the horse in a dry place.

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. Syrup + molassestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Ginger + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, corn, milk, molasses):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, corn, milk, molasses. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesOrgeat SyrupOrgeat Syrup13 recipesSimple SyrupSimple Syrup13 recipes