Name: Grand Ptisan, or Diet Drink of Health and Longevity
Ingredients: 1 quart of best sifted and well washed oats; a small handful of wild succory roots; 6 quarts of river water; ½ ounce of crystal mineral; 3-4 tablespoons of the best honey (or ¼ pound)

Why it works: Oats and honey work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 634 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Grand Ptisan, or Diet Drink of Health and Longevity

Ingredients

1 quart of best sifted and well washed oats
a small handful of wild succory roots
6 quarts of river water
½ ounce of crystal mineral
3-4 tablespoons of the best honey (or ¼ pound)

Directions

Make the decoction

Boil the oats and wild sorrel roots gently in 6 quarts of river water for 45 minutes.
Add the crystal mineral and honey, then boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Strain and cool

Strain the mixture through linen into an earthen vessel and cover to cool.

Adjust and serve

For those with a bilious habit, use only half the quantity of honey.
Drink 2 glasses of this Ptisan every morning on an empty stomach and the same amount 3 hours after dinner for 14 days.

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.

Oats + honeytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together634 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Oats: Release starch and body into the liquid during long simmering, giving the tea a fuller texture.
Honey: Adds sweetness and a rounded flavour to the finished tea.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.