Name: A Great Restorative
Ingredients: 2 calves' feet; 2 pints water; 2 pints new milk; lemon peel (optional); cinnamon (optional); mace (optional); sugar (to taste)

Why it works: Cinnamon and mace match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,611 recipes mention both. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Bake the calves' feet in 2 pints of water and 2 pints of new milk in a covered jar for 3.5 hours.
Once cooled, remove the fat.
Serve a large teacupful of the mixture first and last thing each day.
For flavor, add lemon peel, cinnamon, or mace while baking.
Add sugar to taste after baking.

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.

Cinnamon + macetop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cinnamon + sugartop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together30,777 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together12,647 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Lemon + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together19,048 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 30,777 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, mace, sugar):

Vanillabetter flavor fit
Applebetter flavor fit
Figbetter flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, mace, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).