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Slippery Elm Tea
Cover one teaspoonful of slippery elm bark with one cupful of boiling water. Let stand until cold; then strain and add lemon juice and sugar to taste. This is very healing for irritation of the throat.
A cold infusion rather than a brewed tea, and the cold steeping is the whole point. Slippery elm's mucilage — the soothing part — extracts slowly and thickens as it stands, which is why the recipe tells you to walk away from it.
- Do not hurry itThe cup needs to go fully cold, which will take an hour or two at room temperature. Straining while warm gives you thin, faintly woody water instead of the slightly viscous liquid that actually coats a sore throat.
- Which bark to buyHerb suppliers sell slippery elm as coarse shredded inner bark or as a fine powder. The recipe does not say which, though shredded bark strains more cleanly; powder thickens the whole cup into a thin gruel that will clog a sieve, so use less of it and expect to press it through cloth.
- StrainingA fine-mesh sieve is not always enough, since the mucilage carries fine particles with it. Line the sieve with a double layer of cheesecloth or use a coffee filter, and let it drip rather than pressing hard.
- YieldOne serving of roughly 6 to 7 fl oz after straining and losses. Scale up by the cupful; a batch made in a quart jar works the same way.
- KeepingThe infusion is a watery carbohydrate solution and spoils quickly; the lemon and sugar are for flavour, not preservation. Refrigerate and drink within 24 hours, and add the lemon juice just before serving so it does not taste flat.
- Texture, honestlyCooled slippery elm has a slippery, faintly slimy body — the name is descriptive, not poetic. Lemon and a little sugar cut it, and a spoonful of honey does the job better if you want it thicker and sweeter.
- One practical cautionMucilage may slow the absorption of medicines taken at the same time. If in doubt, separate it from prescription drugs by an hour or two.
- SourcingUlmus rubra is susceptible to Dutch elm disease, and bark is sometimes stripped from wild trees. Buy from a supplier that states cultivated or sustainably harvested stock.
Slippery elm is the inner bark of Ulmus rubra, a North American tree whose mucilage was used by Indigenous peoples of the eastern woodlands for sore throats, wounds and poultices long before it reached printed cookbooks; settlers adopted it, and by the nineteenth century it was a staple of the domestic medicine chest, sold by druggists as shredded bark and later in lozenges. Preparations of this kind belong to a genre of nineteenth-century invalid cookery — barley water, toast water, beef tea, flaxseed tea — gentle, barely flavored drinks meant to be swallowed by someone who could not manage food.