Name: An Excellent Cleansing Drink, for a Cow After Calving
Ingredients: 3 ounces juniper berries, pounded; 2 ounces birthwort powder; 1 ounce fenugreek powder; 2 ounces spermaceti; 1 ounce flour of sulphur; 1 ounce antimony powder; ½ ounce saffron; 1 quart warm ale

Why it works: Fenugreek and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

An Excellent Cleansing Drink, for a Cow After Calving

Ingredients

Directions

Mix all the ingredients together.
Dissolve the mixture in 1 quart of warm ale.
Administer one dose to the cow, and repeat every other day until cleansing occurs.

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.

Fenugreek + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together55 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Fenugreek + saffrontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Flour + saffrontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together447 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).