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.
In addition, 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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Blackberry Cordial
Two quarts blackberry juice, one pound loaf sugar, four grated nutmegs, one-quarter ounce ground cloves, one-quarter ounce ground allspice, one-quarter ounce ground cinnamon. Simmer all together, for thirty minutes, in a stewpan closely covered, to prevent evaporation. Strain through a cloth when cold and add a pint of the best French brandy. Soothing and efficacious in the summer complaints of children. Dose, one teaspoonful poured on a little pounded ice, once or several times a day, as the case may require. Whortleberry cordial may be made by the same recipe. Good old whiskey may be used for either, in the absence of brandy.--Mrs. Gen. S. Blackberry Cordial.
Half a bushel of berries, well mashed, one quarter pound of allspice (pulverized), two ounces cloves (pulverized). Mix and boil slowly till done. Then strain through homespun or flannel, and one pound white sugar to each pint of juice. Boil again, and, when cool, add half a gallon best brandy. Good for diarrhea or dysentery. Dose, one teaspoonful or more according to age.--Mrs. S. B.
Two versions of the same household remedy, one small and one made in bulk at the height of the berry season. Both are workable as a spiced blackberry liqueur; the dosing instructions attached to them are another matter.
- Read the dosing advice as history, not instructionBoth cooks intend this as medicine for children with "summer complaint" — dysentery and diarrhoea. The proportions work out at roughly 8 to 10 percent alcohol by volume. Alcohol is never given to children in any amount today, and diarrhoeal illness in a child is treated with oral rehydration and a doctor. Make it as an adult cordial or not at all.
- The nutmeg is heavyFour whole grated nutmegs in two quarts of juice is something like an ounce of nutmeg, and nutmeg in quantity is genuinely intoxicating and unpleasant. At the teaspoon doses the recipe assumes, this is irrelevant; drunk by the glassful it is not. One nutmeg is plenty for two quarts.
- Loaf sugarRefined white sugar, sold in hard cones or blocks and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is a direct substitute by weight.
- Half a bushel of berriesA bushel of blackberries is usually reckoned at something like 40 lb or more, so the second recipe starts with roughly 20 lb of fruit and will yield several quarts of juice — a preserving-kettle project, not a saucepan one. The sugar is then measured against the juice, one pound per pint, which is very sweet by modern taste.
- WhortleberryAn old name covering huckleberries and bilberries, and used loosely for wild blueberries. Any of these works in place of the blackberries.
- Straining through homespun or flannelA double layer of damp muslin or a jelly bag does the same job. Let it drip rather than squeezing if you want a clear cordial; squeezing pushes fine pulp through and clouds it.
- Add the spirit off the heat and coldBoth recipes are explicit about waiting until the syrup has cooled. Alcohol added to a hot syrup will partly boil off, and the point of the brandy is preservation as much as flavour.
- KeepingBottle full, seal, and store cool and dark. The heavily sugared second version will keep for many months; the first, with much less sugar and a modest alcohol level, is best treated as a shorter-lived bottling and kept refrigerated once opened.
Fruit cordials sat on the line between the pantry and the medicine chest for most of the nineteenth century, and blackberry cordial sat further onto the medicine side than most. Blackberry root and fruit were standard domestic astringents, credited with checking the "summer complaint" that killed a great many children in the hot months before anyone understood contaminated milk and water, and American household books of the period often carry a version of this recipe, usually with a dose attached. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree in the late 1870s from contributions by named Virginia housewives, prints two of them side by side under the initials of their donors, a record of what particular women actually kept in their cupboards rather than tested standardised formulas. The astringency the cooks trusted comes from tannins in the fruit, which is a real property; the brandy, doing most of the visible work on a distressed patient, is the part that reads worst now.