Name: Health Drink
Ingredients: 12 Italian chestnuts; 12 dates; 1 pint sweet milk

Why it works: Chestnut and dates share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Health Drink

Ingredients

12 Italian chestnuts
12 dates
1 pint sweet milk

Directions

Grind the chestnuts and dates finely.
Pour the sweet milk over the ground mixture.
Set aside for 1 hour.
Strain before using.
If left overnight, grind the nuts coarsely.

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.

Chestnut + datestop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together470 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Chestnut + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together330 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts: Starch gives the milk body and a thick, creamy texture after grinding.
Dates: Add natural sweetness and a rich, caramel-like flavor.
Sweet milk: Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and gives a creamy mouthfeel.