Name: Sage Gargle
Ingredients: 1 pint water; large handful sage leaves; ½ cup port wine; ½ cup vinegar; honey or brown sugar to taste

Why it works: Vinegar and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,586 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sage Gargle

Ingredients

Directions

Boil water in a pan.
Add sage leaves and cover the pan.
Reduce the mixture to half and strain it.
Let it cool, then mix with port wine and vinegar.
Sweeten with honey or brown sugar.
Use the sage decoction alone or with vinegar and honey, or gargle with vinegar and water.

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.

Vinegar + honeytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,586 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Port wine + honeytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together23 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Sage + vinegartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together618 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sage + port winetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together109 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).