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Scurvy Grass Ale

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Anise and fennel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry cis-anethole, which smells anise. The science ↓

Scurvy Grass Ale

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the Seville oranges into pieces.

  2. Place all ingredients into a bag with a large stone.

  3. Submerge the bag in 3 gallons of new ale.

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.

  1. Anise + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-anethole (anise).

  2. Fennel + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Rhubarb + anisetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Anise + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

Swap the cassia

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rhubarb, anise, fennel, horseradish, orange):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Cassiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, anise, fennel, horseradish, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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