Jelly for a consumption

Note

Consumption is another name for tuberculosis

Quote

Take a pound of hartshorn shavings¹, nine ounces of eringo root², three ounces of isinglass, a chopin (quart) of bruised snails, and four ounces of viper powder³. Put the whole in two pints (four quarts) of water; let it boil till the jelly is reduced to one pint, and then strain it through a sieve: when cold, stir it into a pan with a mutchkin (pint) of Rhenish⁴ wine, half a pound of brown sugar-candy⁵, the juice of two Seville oranges, and the whites of three or four beat eggs⁶; let it boil for three minutes, then run it through a jelly-bag, and pot it up. — A tea cup-full of this jelly may be taken twice a-day.

— The Practice of Cookery, Pastry, and Confectionary (Mrs Frazer, 1820)

Footnotes

1. Hartshorn shavings can be made from deer antlers as the name suggests, or shaved calves’ bones. Either way, it’s the marrow the recipe needs - a source of gelatin ↩

2. Candied sea holly root, see ↩

3. Made from adders, but I have no idea how it was prepared ↩

4. Rhine Valley ↩

5. Brown sugar candy is softer than its white sugar counterpart ↩

6. I am assuming the egg whites are there to make filtering the jelly easier ↩