Important: Safety Warning
This page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
This page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Spanish Cherries
given to even typhoid patients with success when fruits as a rule are forbidden. Also, peaches have been found beneficial in serious cases of intestinal disorders among children and adults alike. The peculiar acids of this fruit are apparently fatal to germs of the dysentery type and Holbrook quotes a physician who wrote him that in the treatment of dysentery he much preferred "ripe, sound fruit, peaches especially, to any medicine that can be suggested." Fresh or stewed the fruit is laxative and refrigerant. The seeds and flowers of peaches are used in the manufacture of a liqueur called Persico and the bruised pits give to almost any alcoholic liquor the flavour of Noyeau. The flowers were formerly steeped to be used as a tea for their laxative quality and it is also thought they exert "to a moderate extent, a sedative influence over the nervous system" (U. S. Dispensatory). Sometimes, according to the same authority, they have been given in infusion for "irritability of the bladder, sick stomach, and whooping-cough." As for the blossoms, it should be remembered that they have been known to cause fatal cases of poisoning among children although in the hands of physicians they are safely used (as a vermifuge), and "a syrup prepared from them is considerably used in infantile cases, on the continent of Europe." The leaves, when rubbed or steeped in hot water, give out a strong almond flavour greatly esteemed in many countries. From both the leaves and kernels, when distilled, is extracted oil, that from the kernels being frequently used as an adulterant of almond oil.
The apricot is supposed to have originated in Armenia. The nectarine, once puzzling to botanists, is but a variation of the peach. (All recipes for peaches may be applied to nectarines and apricots.) PEACHES HALVED (Uncooked) Select large freestones; drop into boiling water for two minutes, then into iced water, and the fruit will easily slip out of the skin. Halve the peaches; remove pits and place the fruit on ice. When ready to serve fill the centres with powdered sugar, or sugar and melted marshmallows; join each two halves with short, fine, toothpicks, and place in the serving dishes or glasses. Pass with them whipped cream.
The recipe proper is the short paragraph at the end: peeled raw peach halves, sugared, sandwiched back together and served with cream. The long passage before it is nineteenth-century medical theory and should be read, not followed.
- Ignore the medicinal matterPeach kernels, blossoms and leaves contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when broken down; the book itself admits fatal poisonings among children. Nothing in the first half of the page should be steeped, infused or distilled.
- Freestone is not optionalThe whole method depends on the pit falling away cleanly from a halved fruit. Clingstone peaches will shred as you dig the stone out, and a nectarine or apricot substitution works only if it too is a freestone variety.
- The blanchTwo minutes in boiling water is the outer limit for a ripe peach and will overcook the flesh just under the skin; thirty to sixty seconds is usually enough once the water is at a full boil. Cut a shallow X in the base first and the skin slips away in sheets. The ice bath is what stops the cooking, so have it ready before the water boils.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage this generally meant a finely ground sugar, not necessarily the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works; granulated is grittier, as it will not fully dissolve in the cold fruit.
- Melted marshmallowsBy this period these were a soft, gelatin-and-gum confection close to what we buy now. Melt them over low heat with a spoonful of water or cream, and let the mixture cool to lukewarm before filling, or it will slump the peach.
- BrowningCut peaches oxidise within minutes. Brush the halves with lemon juice before they go on ice, or peel and halve them no more than half an hour before serving.
- ToothpicksThey are structural, not decorative, and they are also a swallowing hazard at the table. Say something when you serve, or skip them and set the halves cut side up, filled, rather than joining them.
- YieldOne reassembled peach per person, with lightly sweetened whipped cream passed separately. Four to six peaches makes a dessert for that many.
This is a peach dish filed under a cherry heading. Long passages of dietetic and pharmacological lore, quoted secondhand from the U. S. Dispensatory and from popular health writers like M. L. Holbrook, run straight into a few lines of practical kitchen instruction. The medical claims belong to a period when fruit was still widely suspected of causing summer complaint and cholera infantum, and dietary reformers were arguing the opposite case, that it was the cure. The recipe's one modern touch is the melted marshmallow, which suggests the confection as an inexpensive grocery item in the United States rather than a druggist's marshmallow-root paste. The claim that the apricot originated in Armenia is the traditional one, preserved in the botanical name Prunus armeniaca, though the fruit is generally traced further east to China.