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Camomile Tea
Pour a pint of boiling water over a half ounce of camomile flowers. Let them soak for ten minutes, and then strain. If taken warm, camomile tea acts as a gentle emetic. When taken cold it is often beneficial in cases of dyspepsia, hysteria, and headache.
A plain infusion, but the proportions are medicinal rather than convivial: this is several times the strength of a modern teabag. A few notes before you scale it.
- The pintCassell's is a British book, so a pint here is the Imperial 20 fl oz, about 570 ml. An American pint of 16 oz will give a correspondingly stronger brew.
- Half an ounce of flowersThat is roughly 14 g of dried chamomile to the pint. A supermarket chamomile teabag holds 1-2 g for a mug, so this is on the order of four to seven times the usual strength. For drinking pleasure rather than dosing, 2-3 g per cup is the sensible starting point.
- Which chamomileVictorian herbalists usually meant Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile), which is markedly more bitter than the German chamomile (Matricaria recutita) sold in most tea aisles today. If you use Roman flowers at the quantity given, expect something closer to a bitter tonic than a soothing cup.
- Ten minutes, coveredCover the vessel while it steeps. The aromatics in chamomile are volatile and an open jug loses much of the scent in steam; a lid or saucer keeps it in the liquid.
- Strain properlyWhole dried flower heads shed fine chaff. A fine mesh strainer or a doubled square of muslin gives a clear infusion; a coarse tea strainer will let silt through.
- The emetic claimThe book's assertion that a warm cup acts as a gentle emetic reflects nineteenth-century domestic medicine, not current evidence. Treat the whole entry as a beverage, and do not use it to try to induce vomiting.
- Who should skip itChamomile is in the daisy family, and people with ragweed or Asteraceae allergies occasionally react to it. It is also worth checking with a doctor if you take anticoagulants.
- YieldAbout two large cups. It keeps a day in the refrigerator, which suits the book's suggestion of taking it cold.
Chamomile belongs to the world of Cassell's because in a late-Victorian household the kitchen and the medicine cupboard were the same room. Alongside beef tea, barley water and gruel, chamomile tea belonged to the class of "sick-room drinks" a cook was expected to be able to produce without a doctor's involvement. The plant had been a staple of English physic gardens for centuries, Roman chamomile being the low, mat-forming species, and the name is generally traced to the Greek chamaimelon, "earth apple", for the faintly apple-like scent of the crushed flowers. The specific uses listed here o and and headache and dyspepsia and hysteria u arguably reflect the complaints Victorian domestic manuals often assigned to women, and "hysteria" in particular was a catch-all diagnosis of the period rather than anything a modern clinician would recognise. What survives of all this is the mildest part of the tradition: chamomile as a calming evening drink.