Hedgerow To Kitchen

Herb Soceity logo
 

| Home | About us | News | Journal | Diary | Groups | Forum | Articles | Education | Links |

 

Honey and Herbs: Bringing Sweetness And Creativity Into The Kitchen
Part 2 - Pills & Lozenges

By Sarah Head
Herbal Pills
Herbal Lozenges

Honey is also an effective medium for delivery of herbal medicine. Paul Bergner, writing on Henriette Kress’ email discussion group said, “A very active form [of taking herbs] with all the constituents is recently powdered herb decocted in hot honey. The hot honey is the consistency of water. You get as much powder into it as you can, sort of like adding flour to water to make bread dough. When the honey cools, it thickens and you get a paste. You can roll this into honey pills, roll them in licorice powder etc".

Both Henriette Kress, the Finnish herbalist and the Arizona Herbalist, Darcey Blue French, who trained with Paul Bergner, have their own methods of making honey pills. On her blog, Henriette describes making a “flu pill” from six different roots plus hibiscus flowers. The mixture started off as a herb tea mix, but then she put everything into a blender, sieved it and made herbal pills by adding the resulting powder to a spruce/pine syrup she had in her fridge. Her instructions are as follows.

“For pillmaking, the moistness of the syrup+powder should be such that you can take a handful of the mix, squeeze it, and it'll show where your fingers were on the now oblong ball, which isn't wet enough to let any liquid drip off - not even one drop. The pills: it's easiest to make small pyramids by squeezing smidgens off that presqueezed ball between the tips of the thumbs and forefingers. Making hare-dropping type round pills just won't work - not after the first five or so, anyway, because this mess sticks to your hands. Drop the pills onto baking paper and, once you've formed all your pills, put the sheet into your oven at 40 C or so. You can also use a dehydrator: set that to 40 C, too. Or let things ai rdry, covered up to keep the flies away. But: the precise oven and the dehydrator means that your pills will be done in about 3 hours, whereas air drying means you'll have to wait for your pills for a day or two.”

Darcy shared how to make the honey pills with powdered herbs on the Herbwifery Forum. She described the process as “mix the powdered herbs, and a bit of marshmallow powder (helps it to make a dough) with a bit of honey - just enough to hold it together- and work into a stiff dough, then roll into pills. These can be taken fresh, or dehydrated in the oven with the light on, or in a dehydrator to be stored on the shelf.” Darcey uses the honey pills for indigestion or nausea if she is suffering in the middle of the night, popping the pills in her mouth to let them continue their work while she returns to sleep.

Slippery Elm Powder


Wild Cherry Bark
In May 2009, family herbalist, Kristina Brown, wrote about making lozenges and herbal pills on the Not Dabbling in Normal Blog. This is her recipe for sore throat lozenges


Herbal Lozenge Mix

3 Tbsp Powdered Slippery Elm Bark
3 Tbsp Powdered Liquorice Root
1 Tbsp Powdered Echinacea Root & Leaf
1 Tsp Powdered Wild Cherry Bark

Mix the powders together and then add enough honey to make a thick, gooey mass. It takes less honey than you’d think so start out slowly with the honey. Next add essential oils such as thyme, orange or rosemary, about 5-10 drops. When using essential oils always make sure they are safe for internal consumption as some can be quite strong.

Roll the mass in more powdered slippery elm to coat and then roll out until about 1/4″ thick. Cut the dough into quarter sized pieces, roll them into a ball and place on a cookie sheet, flattening them. As you are doing this, dip them in more slippery elm if needed. Set out to dry for about 12 hours. Store in an airtight jar.

Darcey likes to make throat lozenges from slippery elm, myrrh, sage, and liquorice. She thinks this combination benefits from a drop of peppermint essential oil in the dough.

Pills can be made the same way for a myriad of uses. Kristina gives one example of making pills for headaches using herbs such as skullcap, valerian, wood betony, chamomile and lemon balm. She says, “add enough honey to make a gooey mass, roll the ball of dough in slippery elm and start pinching off pea sized pieces. Roll them into balls, flatten if desired and place on a cookie sheet. Air dry and store in a glass bottle.”

Pills can be flavoured with cocoa powder or carob or herbal fruits such as rosehip or elderberry. Such flavours could be obtained by using an already infused honey rather than adding extra ingredients to the mix.

Coming In Part 3: Using honey to make Electuaries & Elixirs.

References

French, DB - Herbal Honey Pills And Nothing In General
Brown, K - Herbal Lozenges & Pills

Sarah Head is a member of The Herb Society and a regular contributor to our forum and website. She offers training on coping with bereavement to professionals all over the country. And also runs herb workshops and grows over 100 herbs in two gardens in Solihull and the Cotswolds.


Return to the Herbs In The Kitchen Page

To make comments on this article, go to our Forum.

| Home | About us | News | Journal | Diary | Groups | Forum | Articles | Education | Links |