Name: Diarrhea Syrup
Ingredients: 2 oz boxwood bark; 2 oz black cherry bark; 2 oz prickly ash bark; 2 oz dandelion root; 1 oz butternut bark; 2 lbs loaf sugar; 1 cup alcohol or 1 pint brandy

Why it works: Dandelion and butternut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Diarrhea Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Combine boxwood, black cherry, prickly ash, and dandelion root with butternut bark in a pot.
Boil thoroughly, then strain the mixture.
Boil the strained liquid down to 1 quart.
Add loaf sugar and alcohol or brandy, stirring until dissolved.
Take a wine glass full 3 to 5 times daily as needed.

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.

Dandelion + butternuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cherry + butternuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cherry + dandeliontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cherry + brandytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together300 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 cherry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dandelion, butternut, sugar, brandy):

Raisinfits better
Lemonfits about as well
Vanillafits about as well
Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dandelion, butternut, sugar, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.