Hildegard von Bingen's Happiness Cookies

Dec. 30th, 2006 at 10:23 AM

"The nutmeg has a greath warmth and a good mixture in its powers. When a human being eats nutmeg it opens his heart, and his sense is pure, and it puts him a good state of mind. Take nutmeg and (in the same amount) cinnamon and some cloves and grind them up. And then, from this powder and some water, make flour - and roll out some little tarts. Eat these often and it will lower the bitterness of your heart and your mind and open your heart and your numbed senses. It will make your spirit happy, purify and cleanse your mind, lower all bad fluids in you, give your blood a good tonic, and make you strong. (Hildegard von Bingen, Physica, I, 21)

Cookies for Preventing Sadness
(Based on a recipe by Hildegard von Bingen)

22 g ground nutmeg
22 g ground cinnamon
5 g cloves
500 g spelt flour
150 g cane sugar
250 g butter
2 eggs
A pinch of salt
100 g almond pieces

Bake cookies at 350 F (180 C) for 5 to 10 minutes. Beware! They have a strong effect.

(From "Pagan Christmas" by Christian Ratsch and Claudia Muller-Ebeling)

Music:Natalie Merchant

Comments

( 8 comments — Leave a comment )

sprockey wrote:

Dec. 31st, 2006 02:18 am (UTC)

I wonder if that's true about nutmeg. With thousand-year old medicine, it's hard to tell the difference between real, working herbal remedies and superstition.

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abhasana wrote:

Dec. 31st, 2006 02:44 am (UTC)

I've got no idea. They don't sound like bad cookies by any means. I liked the fact that this famous woman had left her cookie recipe for posterity. :)

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lwood wrote:

Dec. 31st, 2006 03:50 am (UTC)

Well, I don't know about the happiness bit, but I do know that nutmeg has hallucinogenic properties if ingested in sufficient quantities--teh intarwebs say that that's about a tablespoon, but take that with, well, 22 g of NaCl. 8-P

At any rate, 22 g is four whole smallish nutmegs (says my scale), call it 2 tablespoons (and change) of powdered.

What croggles me though is the cloves--twenty-two grams is a lot of cloves, which are light in mass and mighty in potence: I threw two dozen whole cloves at my scale and it wasn't even ten grams, when an average recipe (a pumpkin pie, say) wants no more than three cloves, or they'll dominate the other spices.

Whee!

-- Lorrie

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lwood wrote:

Dec. 31st, 2006 03:52 am (UTC)

...or I could actually, y'know, read, because it says cinnamon there, not cloves. Phew.

At that point, I would wonder if what's called for is cinnamon as such, or the cassia which is usually what you get in the US when you buy "cinnamon". Cassia tends to a warmer flavor, cinnamon to a hotter. Your mileage may vary.

-- Lorrie

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abhasana wrote:

Dec. 31st, 2006 05:14 pm (UTC)

I'd suspect that the original recipe refered to cinnamon-not-cassia because of when it was written, but I'm not exactly sure when cinnamon-cassia became the norm (and the norm may be very different in Europe).

I haven't tried nutmeg, but I've heard about the psychoactive properties. Cinnamon (cassia?) sticks also have mild effects that I used for a while; you light the stick like you would a cigar and smoke a little bit. I dunno if I'd call it psychoactive, but it was a bit. . .interesting. The smoke is very harsh though, and the interesting effects may have come from hyperventalation as much as anything else. Kiln dried sticks had nothing to offer, it seems.

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