Horehound tea boiled to candy with honey, lard and a tablespoonful of tar.
Boil a double handful of green hoarhound in 2 quarts of water, down to 1 quart; strain, and add to this tea 2 cups of extracted honey and a tablespoonful each of lard and tar.
Boil down to a candy, but not enough to make it brittle. Begin to eat this, increase from a piece the size of a pea to as much as can be relished. It is an excellent cough candy and always gives relief in a short time.
The Bride's Cook Book, 1918. Public domain; transcription unaltered.
Pine tar was a real pharmaceutical, and tar preparations for coughs and skin were mainstream. Crude tar also contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, several of which are carcinogens, and this is a sweet made for eating freely.
The dosing instruction is the opposite of a dose. “As much as can be relished” means the sweeter you make it, the more of it a child will take.
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Read the original page →The antidote table's advice for opium and laudanum — emetic draught, vinegar and water, “dashing cold water on chest and face, walking up and down for two or three hours.”
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906
Raw loin beaten in a marble mortar with sweet and bitter almonds and sugar, into a pulp with “a rosy hue, and a very agreeable taste.” Said to keep “even in summer.”
The Dixie Cook-Book · 1883
One grain of mercury chloride twice a day as an alterative, four to five as a laxative. The book calls it “a most dangerous medicine” and prints the doses anyway.
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906