A Cordiall Water A Garland of Odd and Old Receipts to Assuage the Ills of Man and Beast

A charming collection of traditional remedies and folk medicines which have been prepared from Shakespeare's time to the present.

First published in 1961, A Cordiall Water collects a charming mixed bag of nostrums, elixirs, restoratives, and fortifiers and intersperces them with autobiographical anecdotes from M. F. K. Fisher’s life in California, Provence, Mexico, and Switzerland. These engaging recipes, "a perfect combination of superstition, instinct, and primitive knowledge" deal with commonplace ailments--sore throats, cures for cats, aging skin, fevers, PMS and hangovers. Ingredients of these extraordinary receipts are transformed into cures and preventatives told in the inimitable style of this master of the finely observed life.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, as M F. K. Fisher was the preeminent American food writer. She wrote thirty-three books, including a translation of The Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Her first book, Serve It Forth, was published in 1937. Fisher's books are an amalgam of food literature, travel, and memoir.