Name: Dr. Boerhaave’s Sweet Buttermilk
Ingredients: milk from the cow; biscuits; rusks; ripe fruits; dried fruits; raisins

Why it works: Biscuit and raisin work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dr. Boerhaave’s Sweet Buttermilk

Ingredients

Directions

Pour fresh cow's milk into a small churn.
Churn for about 10 minutes until butter flakes form and the milk appears thin and blue.
Strain the milk through a sieve.
Drink the buttermilk frequently as the main beverage.
Serve biscuits and rusks along with ripe and dried fruits, especially raisins, as food.

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.

Biscuit + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Milk + biscuittop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,332 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).