☠️ Poison Pantry
Lead, cyanide, opium and the mineral acids. The recipes that would actually hurt you.
38 recipes, worst first.
Bilious Cholic (opium-turpentine cordial)
“Equal parts of gum opium, gum camphor, and spirits of turpentine, dissolved in spirits.” For stomach pain. Taken by mouth.
The House-Keeper's Guide and Indian Doctor · 1851
Beer of Sulphuric Acid
Dilute battery acid, orange syrup, two gallons of water. “Entirely harmless, even if taken in considerable quantities.”
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906
Bonbons cast in leaden moulds
“Provide leaden moulds… oiled with oil of sweet almonds.” Boiling candy syrup goes straight into the lead. The sweets are for children.
Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts · 1867
Sparkle-fining with sugar of lead
Working directions for brightening cordial gin and hock with salts of lead. The book calls it “pernicious” and then prints the method anyway.
The French Wine and Liquor Manufacturer · 1863
Worms in Children
Boil witch-hazel bark in a pewter vessel and dose by age — a tablespoonful at a year old. “It is sure and safe.”
The House-Keeper's Guide and Indian Doctor · 1851
Russian Mode of Preserving Fruit
Moisten quicklime with water containing “a little creosote,” pack the fruit in it, and layer with paper. Reported as in extensive use in Russia.
Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery · 1912
Pickling Olives
Home-cured olives in half a pound of concentrated lye, finished in weak brine. Even the 1915 editors hedge: “We do not vouch for this recipe.”
Canning, Preserving and Jelly Making · 1915
Common Ratafia
“Nutmegs, 8 oz., bitter almonds, 10 lbs., Lisbon sugar, 8 lbs., ambergris, 10 grs.” Bruised and infused three days in ten gallons of proof spirit.
Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts · 1867
Jamaica Rum (factitious)
“Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; Jamaica rum, 1 gall.; sulphuric acid, ½ oz.; acetic ether, 4 oz.” One gallon of rum, stretched to five.
Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts · 1867
To Make Sherry Wine (by fermentation)
Sixteen barrels of whiskey, two thousand pounds of sugar, coriander seed — and sulphuric acid, “added to clarify the wine.” No sherry involved.
The French Wine and Liquor Manufacturer · 1863
Almond Milk
“When almonds, either bitter or sweet, are pounded together, and water added…” Four ounces per pint, sweetened, boiled once, drunk as a beverage.
The Cook Book by Oscar of the Waldorf · 1896
Custards, Boiled
“1 pint of milk, 3 eggs, 3 oz. of loaf sugar, 3 laurel-leaves, or the rind of ½ lemon, or a few drops of essence of vanilla.” Take your pick.
Mrs. Beeton's All About Cookery · 1907
Domestic Peach Brandy
Two gallons of brandy, one of mashed peaches, “and the pits from a peck of the fruit.” Let stand two months, filter, bottle.
Fruit Recipes · 1907
Oil of Cognac from fusel oil
The flavour of French brandy, manufactured: distilled from marc and lees, esterified with concentrated sulphuric acid, and adulterated with alcohol before it reaches you.
The French Wine and Liquor Manufacturer · 1863
Raspberry Syrup Coloured with Aniline Red
A wholesale raspberry syrup, given “a good color… by the addition of a sufficient quantity of either aniline-red, or cherry juice.” Either will do.
The French Wine and Liquor Manufacturer · 1863
Brandy Peaches
Twelve pounds of peaches in syrup and spirit — with the second version dunking them in boiling lye “to loosen the fur,” and both adding the kernels.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia · 1879
Curry Powder
“One pound and a half of Papaver Somniferum. Two pounds of Turmeric…” The opium poppy, named by species, heading the ingredient list of a curry powder.
High-Class Cookery Recipes · 1906
Imitation gin with ethers and acid
Gin assembled from ethers and acid, flavoured with mashed prune kernels. The author assures the reader that “the addition of ethers and ammonia is not at all prejudicial.”
The French Wine and Liquor Manufacturer · 1863
Prune Tincture
“Stones, kernels, the whole together” — twenty-five pounds of them, broken open and steeped fifteen days in proof spirit, then blended into brandy.
The French Wine and Liquor Manufacturer · 1863
Soda Biscuits (No. 65)
Eight pounds of flour, two of butter, and three drachms of muriatic acid — while the same book's appendix quotes Liebig that commercial muriatic acid “is always most impure.”
The Bread and Biscuit Baker's and Sugar-Boiler's Assistant · 1890
Ginger Liqueur
A gallon of malt whiskey, four pounds of sugar, bruised ginger, lemon rind — and five ounces of bitter almonds. Steep six days, filter, bottle.
The Home Cook Book · 1887
Peach Jelly
“Crack one-third of the kernels and put them in the jar with the peaches.” Heat, strain, and set as jelly.
The Dixie Cook-Book · 1883
Pineapple Rum
“Neutral spirits, 4 galls.; honey, 5 pts.; Jamaica rum, 1 gall.; sulphuric acid, 1 oz.; butyric ether, 2 oz.” The pineapple is the ether.
Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts · 1867
Unfermented Bread
“Mix 1 ounce of bicarbonate of soda with 8 pounds of flour. Stir 1 ounce of hydrochloric acid with 4 pints of warm water.” Fizz the two together and bake.
Consolidated Library of Modern Cooking and Household Recipes · 1905
Peach-leaf custard flavoring
“How I wish my garden were near enough… a handful of fresh peach leaves! I would boil them in the milk… there is no flavor more delicious.” Said to children, in a book for children.
Six Little Cooks; or, Aunt Jane's Cooking Class · 1877
Lemon Custard with cherry-laurel
“A wonderful flavour is given… by boiling in the cream… a leaf of the cherry laurel. Great care, however, must be used; for the cherry laurel is poisonous.”
Kettner's Book of the Table · 1877
Coca Champagne
A soda-fountain formula: champagne stock syrup, sugar colour, tartaric acid, and one full pint of cocaine-bearing coca wine.
The American Soda Book of Receipts and Suggestions, 1905 · 1905
Wine of Coca
The fountain's house coca wine: “Fluid extract of coca, 2 ounces; port wine, 1 gallon; sherry wine, 2 gallons.” Colour to suit.
The American Soda Book of Receipts and Suggestions, 1905 · 1905
Alum for Croup
“For croup, combine a teaspoonful of powdered alum… with two teaspoonfuls of sugar, and give this promptly.” Plus a quarter-ounce of alum in boiled milk.
Meals Medicinal · 1905
Gherkins (pickling method)
The gherkins are boiled in half vinegar “in an untinned copper basin,” then cooled in the same liquid. The green colour is the point.
The Epicurean · 1894
Mineral Oil Mayonnaise
“Mineral oil… has no food value. It may be used to make mayonnaise dressing.” The book adds: “Mineral oil is mildly laxative, an added advantage.”
Modernistic Recipe-Menu Book · 1929
Mayonnaise Maigre
Mayonnaise built on “one and a half cups of mineral oil,” beaten a teaspoon at a time into raw yolks. Recommended because it passes through undigested.
Cook and Be Cool · 1928
Halfpenny Gingerbread Squares (No. 49)
Alum boiled in water and poured into the treacle, three ounces at a time. “This mixture is for wholesale purposes, and pays well.”
The Bread and Biscuit Baker's and Sugar-Boiler's Assistant · 1890
Borated Fish
“Fish preserved by boracic acid; largely imported from Norway.” That is the whole entry. No comment is offered, because none was needed.
The Grocer's Encyclopedia · 1911
Brisket of Beef
“Take one pound bag salt, two of saltpetre, a little sugar, and a few cloves. Rub this mixture well into the beef every day for a week.”
Cooking in Old Créole Days · 1904
Lime-Juice Cordial
Six pounds of sugar, four ounces of citric acid, and “one half ounce boric acid.” The book adds, with satisfaction, “This will keep indefinitely.”
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon · 1919
Yorkshire Black Puddings
Blood pudding seasoned with pennyroyal — a herb long used as an abortifacient — and hung in the larder until wanted.
Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery · 1912
Blancmanger (Carême's receipt)
Carême's blancmanger: sweet almonds with twenty bitter ones pounded in, strained into isinglass jelly, never cooked. Once prescribed to consumptive patients.
Kettner's Book of the Table · 1877