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A Good Plaster for a Cough

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,557 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the beeswax, Burgundy pitch, and rosin together.

  2. Stir in the common turpentine and oil of mace.

  3. Spread the mixture on a piece of sheep's leather.

  4. Grate nutmeg over the plaster.

  5. Apply the plaster while it is warm.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mace + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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