Name: Ptisan, or Diet Drink of Health and Longevity
Ingredients: 1 quart best sifted oats; small handful wild succory roots; 6 quarts river water; ½ ounce crystal mineral; 3-4 tablespoons 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 ↓

Ptisan, or Diet Drink of Health and Longevity

Ingredients

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

Directions

Boil

Boil oats and wild sorrel roots in river water for 45 minutes.
Add crystal mineral and honey, then boil for another 30 minutes.

Strain and cool

Strain the mixture through linen into an earthen vessel.
Cover and let it cool before serving.

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 soluble fiber into the water, giving the drink body and a thick, smooth texture.
Honey: Adds sweetness and a rounded flavor to the drink.

“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.