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Cough Jelly

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cough Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine cayenne, powdered elm, and loaf sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add hot bayberry tea and stir until a jelly forms.

  3. Flavor with nutmeg, cinnamon, or lemon juice as desired.

  4. Take 1 teaspoon whenever the cough is troublesome.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Tea + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + teatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  5. Bayberry + nutmegtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the bayberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, tea, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Bayberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, tea, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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