Name: Cherry Tooth Paste
Ingredients: 8 ounces Clarified Honey; 8 ounces Precipitated Chalk; 8 ounces Powdered Orris Root; 1 ounce Rose Pink; 30 drops Oil of Cloves; 30 drops Oil of Nutmeg; 30 drops Oil of Rose Geranium; Simple Syrup (enough to make a paste)

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cherry Tooth Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the oils with the powdered ingredients.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.
Mix into a paste with honey and enough simple syrup to achieve a soft consistency.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Rose + geraniumtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together64 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-rose oxide (green, flower).
Honey + rosetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together94 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Honey + clovetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together736 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, rose, clove, geranium, syrup):

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits better
Allspicefits about as well
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, rose, clove, geranium, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.