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Grandmother's Family Spring Bitters

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Dandelion and dock share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Grandmother's Family Spring Bitters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the herbs and roots thoroughly.

  2. Place them in an earthen vessel and pour over 2 quarts of boiled and cooled water.

  3. Let it soak overnight.

  4. In the morning, set the vessel on the back of the stove and steep for 5 hours without boiling.

  5. Strain the mixture through a cloth and add ½ pint of good gin.

  6. Store in a cool place.

  7. Take ½ wineglass (about 2 ounces) as a dose twice a day.

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 + docktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Burdock + docktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Dandelion + burdocktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Dock + rhubarbtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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