Four entries have been received for the North Otago Museum's "recreate the smell of Lane's Emulsion" competition, and some of the concoctions reportedly contain suspect ingredients.
Entries for the competition, organised by museum curator Chloe Searle, closed on Tuesday. Three were received from Oamaru and one from Dunedin.
The aim was for contestants to recreate the fishy smell of the Oamaru-invented and made tonic, which ceased production in 1984.
Competitors had to produce about half a cup of the mixture, along with the recipe, which would be used as part of an exhibition on Lane's Emulsion at the museum.
The greatest memory most people had of the tonic was its smell, and Miss Searle wanted to recreate that for visitors to the exhibition.
Some of the recipes were straightforward, concentrating on the cod liver oil element of the original which produced its unique taste.
But one, provided with an illustrated cartoon of "Lane's Revulsion", was purported to contain dog's bile, turpentine, three-week-old cream, rotten fish soup and slug slime.
All managed to produce the look of the original, once described as "a cream-coloured potion of the consistency of melted ice cream containing ghastly stuff like cod liver oil".
The entries will be judged by a descendant of the original inventor, chemist Edward Lane, who came up with the tonic at his pharmacy in Tees St in 1898.
