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HYSSOP TEA (Invalid Cookery)
Pour a quart of boiling water over half an ounce of dried hyssop-flowers. Cover it closely, and let it remain for a quarter of an hour. Strain the infusion, and sweeten it with a table-spoonful of honey. Two table-spoonfuls should be taken three times a day. Hyssop tea is good for chest diseases. Probable cost, 3d. Sufficient for a quart.
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A plain herbal infusion from the invalid-cookery chapter, where drinks were dosed by the spoonful rather than drunk by the cup. The proportions are sound; the medical claim attached to them is not.
- The quantitiesHalf an ounce of dried hyssop flowers is about 14 g, a generous handful of dried blossom, to a quart of boiling water (an imperial quart, roughly 1.1 litres). That is a strong infusion by modern tea standards, which fits a dose of two tablespoons rather than a cupful.
- Cover it closelyThis is the instruction that matters. Hyssop's character sits in volatile aromatic oils that will leave with the steam; a lid keeps them in the pot. A quarter of an hour is the right steeping time for dried flowers and needs no adjustment.
- Which hyssopThe plant meant here is Hyssopus officinalis, a Mediterranean mint-family shrub sold by herbalists and old-fashioned chemists. It is not anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum), which is a North American plant with a liquorice note and a quite different flavour.
- The medical claim"Good for chest diseases" is nineteenth-century domestic medicine, not evidence. Treat this as a pleasant bitter-aromatic tisane and nothing more; anything respiratory belongs to a doctor.
- Who should skip itConcentrated hyssop essential oil contains pinocamphone and is a recognised convulsant. A water infusion of the flowers is far weaker, but hyssop is conventionally avoided in pregnancy and by anyone with a seizure disorder.
- Honey and keepingStir the honey into the strained liquid while it is still hot so it dissolves cleanly. A quart made for spoonful dosing will sit for days; keep it covered in the refrigerator and make a smaller batch if you simply want something to drink.
- Probable cost, 3dThreepence marks this as a very cheap preparation. Dried hyssop today is a specialist purchase and the economics have entirely reversed.
Invalid cookery occupies its own department in Victorian household manuals, sitting between the kitchen and the sickroom at a time when nursing the ill at home was the ordinary expectation and a doctor's visit was an expense. Hyssop had a long standing in that tradition: it appears in the herbals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a remedy for coughs and complaints of the chest, and the name descends through Greek hyssopos from a Semitic root, though the hyssop of the Hebrew Bible is generally thought to be a different plant altogether, possibly a species of marjoram or caper. By the time Cassell's was compiled, the herb's reputation had passed into domestic habit rather than professional medicine, and the honey in the glass would have done as much soothing as the infusion. The dosing instruction, two tablespoonfuls three times a day, shows how completely the page belongs to the pharmacopoeia rather than the tea table.