Description
Selected from such early American cookbook classics as Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery, Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife, Lydia Child’s The American Frugal Housewife, and other rare publications, the recipes cover using herbs for medicinal, culinary, cosmetic, and other purposes. Readers will discover not only how herbs were used in making vegetable and meat dishes, gravies and sauces, cakes, pies, soups, and beverages, but also how our ancestors employed them in making dyes, furniture polish, insecticides, spot removers, perfumes, hair tonics, soaps, tooth powders, and a lot of other products. Whilst some formulas are completely improbable, others (such as a sunburn ointment created from hog’s lard and elder flowers) were according to long experience and produced excellent results.
More than 100 fine nineteenth-century engravings of herbs add to the charm of this enchanting volume — an invaluable reference and guide for plant lovers and herb enthusiasts on the way to “delight and astound the twentieth-century reader.” (Library Journal).