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Cough Drops
Prepare a decoction of two ounces of dried horehound, half that quantity of camomile, the same of boneset, and two ounces of mullein-flowers, by placing them all in a saucepan, covering them all with water, and boiling them for ten or twelve minutes. Turn the whole into an earthenware or porcelain bowl, cover closely, and let them remain until cold. Strain and pass the liquor through a hair-sieve, measure it, and to each pint allow two pounds of sugar Put the sugar and liquor into a saucepan, boil them to the crack degree, let it cool, pour it onto a greased marble slab, turn it at the edges, and cut it into tablets, or pass it through a dropmachine. Dust them over with fine sugar, put them in boxes, and keep in a cool place.
This is a medicinal confection rather than a sweet, and one of its four herbs is no longer considered safe to swallow. The notes below explain the problem rather than adapting the method.
- Boneset is the disqualifying ingredientBoneset is the problem ingredient -- Eupatorium perfoliatum has been reported to contain unsaturated pyrrolizidine alkaloids, a class of compounds that are cumulatively hepatotoxic and associated with veno-occlusive liver disease, though published analyses of this species vary in how much they find. Regulatory bodies in Europe and elsewhere restrict PA intake to microgram-level limits, and an ounce of dried herb boiled down into a batch of lozenges eaten over days is not a quantity anyone can reconcile with those limits.
- The dose is uncontrolledThe recipe gives no yield and no strength. A decoction concentrated into sugar and eaten a drop at a time delivers an unknown quantity of plant alkaloid per piece, which is precisely the situation modern herbal practice is set up to avoid.
- Mullein needs filtering, not just strainingMullein flowers and leaves carry fine hairs that can irritate the mouth and throat, and a hair sieve will pass them. Mullein infusions are normally recommended to be filtered through cloth or paper, which the instruction as printed does not do.
- Chamomile and ragweed relativesChamomile, boneset and ragweed relatives -- chamomile and boneset are both Asteraceae, a family with well-documented cross-reactivity for people sensitive to ragweed. Two of the four herbs here fall in that group; horehound is a mint and mullein is unrelated.
- "Crack degree" for contextConfectioners' crack is usually given as roughly 290-310F, the stage at which cooled sugar shatters rather than bends. It is the same stage used for ordinary hard candy.
- If you want horehound dropsHorehound alone remains a common flavouring for hard candy and is sold as such. Use a current recipe written for it rather than this one.
Horehound has been the standard bitter of the English and American cough lozenge since at least the eighteenth century, and Marrubium vulgare escaped from colonial gardens to grow wild across much of North America. Boneset's name is often traced to its use in treating break-bone fever, an old term for dengue and for the aching influenzas that swept nineteenth-century cities, though the perfoliate leaves clasping the stem are another long-standing explanation; it was a common domestic remedy in the United States before pharmacology caught up with its alkaloid content.