Name: For White Swellings
Ingredients: 4 oz inner bark of water oak; 8 oz inner bark of white pine; 6 oz inner bark of persimmon; 6 oz sour dock roots; 6 oz bark of elder roots; 4 oz dewberry brier roots; 4 oz inner bark of red oak; water

Why it works: Persimmon and dock share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

For White Swellings

Ingredients

Directions

Bruise all ingredients well while they are green.
Boil the mixture in water until the strength is extracted.
Strain the mixture and boil it down slowly until it reaches the consistency of tar.
This salve can be used for cleansing and healing cancers, ulcers, sore legs, and white swellings.
If applying to a hollow ulcer, dilute a little salve with water and syringe it in, then apply a plaster externally.

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.

Persimmon + docktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1 recipe

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pine + docktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pine + persimmontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).