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To sweeten the breath
Take two ounces of terra japonica; half an ounce of sugar candy, both in powder. Grind one drachm of the best ambergris with ten grains of pure musk; and dissolve a quarter of an ounce of clean gum tragacanth in two ounces of orange flour water. Mix all together, so as to form a paste, which roll into pieces of the thickness of a straw. Cut these into pieces, and lay them in clean paper. This is an excellent perfume for those whose breath is disagreeable.
A breath pastille of the apothecary's kind, held in the mouth to dissolve. Two of its five ingredients come from animals that are now protected, and cannot legally or ethically be bought in most countries.
- AmbergrisA concretion from the intestine of the sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus. The species is listed on CITES Appendix I and, in the United States, is covered by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act; US enforcement has generally treated possession and sale of ambergris as prohibited, though the status of beach-found material has been argued over. Import rules elsewhere vary but are restrictive.
- Musk"Pure musk" here means grain musk from the gland of the male musk deer (Moschus spp.), obtained by killing the animal. All musk deer species are CITES-listed and the trade is banned or tightly controlled. Modern "musk" sold for perfumery is synthetic and is not a food ingredient.
- Terra japonicaNot earth and not Japanese: an extract of Acacia catechu heartwood or of gambier (Uncaria gambir), sold in hard brown cakes and intensely astringent. Catechu still turns up in betel quid and in some traditional medicine, but it is not a standard food ingredient and is not evaluated for the quantities used here.
- Gum tragacanthThe binder, from Astragalus shrubs, still sold as a food-grade gum for sugar paste and pastillage. It is the one ingredient of the five that a modern cook can buy without difficulty.
- Orange flour waterA printer's slip, or an old spelling, for orange flower water — the distillate of bitter orange blossom. It is what dissolves the gum and supplies most of the actual scent.
- The old weightsAn apothecaries' drachm is 60 grains, about 3.9 g; ten grains is roughly 0.65 g. The scale of the thing is small: two ounces of catechu carries only a few grams of the two animal materials.
- If you want the effectUse a current commercial breath pastille, or a plain gum-tragacanth pastillage flavoured with food-grade orange flower water and a little mint or cardamom oil. Leave the whale and the deer out of it.
Breath pastilles like this sat in the overlap between the confectioner's trade and the apothecary's, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century household books reprinted them freely alongside cakes and cordials. The logic is straightforward: catechu is powerfully astringent and dries the mouth, sugar candy makes it bearable, tragacanth holds the mass together, and the ambergris and musk supply a lasting animal sweetness. Both animal materials were among the costliest substances a household could buy, which suggests a reader of some means -- the phrase "the best ambergris" implies a buyer able to choose between grades. Rolling the paste into straw-thin ropes and cutting them was standard confectioner's practice for lozenges and comfits, and laying them on clean paper is how such pastilles were dried and kept.