Monday 30 March 2015

conclusion!


 

We have gone on a gory and disgusting journey together, exploring a whole heap of different books, all of which have a single linking theme: negative and horrible food as seen by children. We tried to see how children 'read' these books and whether it negatively affects the way they think about food, the answer (most of the time) was yes! These books helped to:

  • Make children think about foods creatively
  • Make children look at 'healthy foods' in an often bad light
  • Appreciate what food they do have
  • Look at medicines in a negative way
  • Acknowledge 'greed' as a bad thing
  • Sometimes delight in horrible foods for their disgusting and delightfully gory connotations, possibly because of the horrified reactions of adults.

I learned a great deal about how children (and I!) look at foods negatively based on the way they are represented by children's fiction, and that it is a lot more complex than I originally thought. Food often plays a huge role in children's literature and can greatly affect a child's opinions, tastes and imagination regarding food.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog as much as I have liked writing it! Thanks all!

Works referenced




Beeton, Isabella. Edited by Nicola Humble Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Oxford Paperbacks Abridged Edition June 2008.

Dahl, Roald. Charlie and  The Chocolate Factory Puffin (re- issue edition) Feb 2013

Dahl, Roald. George’s Marvellous Medicine. Puffin (re- issue edition)

Dahl, Roald. Matilda Puffin (re- issue edition) Feb 2013

Dahl, Roald. The BFG Puffin (re- issue edition) Feb 2013

Dahl, Roald. The Twits. (re- issue edition) Feb 2013

Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Warne; New Ed. Edition March 2002

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone. Bloomsbury Publishing. 1997.

 

 

Magical gory food!


The highly popular Harry Potter series by successful author J.K Rowling has been read by children all over the world. It follows the story of a young boy who discovers that he is a wizard and is to start wizarding school. He makes two new best froends: Ron and Hermione and learns all about this new magical world which even contains queer new foods, which are often gruesome or comical. We see chocolate frogs and cockroach clusters, pumpkin pasties, butterbeer and fizzing whizzbees. I thought it would be interesting to try some recipes and so looked to a special cookbook.
In The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook by Dina Bucholz I was rather unimpressed with the book, the recipes were basic and imprecise, and rather than containing the unusual and ‘gory’ magical food such as ‘puking pastilles’, ‘cockroach clusters,’ or “fizzing whizzbees.” Instead, it was more concerned with the ‘britishness’ of the food represented in the Harry Potter series with recipe for “bangers and mash” and “roast chicken.” I decided to be creative and devise by own gory magical recipes, and with the help of my younger brother and decided to really get in to the gruesome imagination of a child. We made some cockroach  clusters with marshmallows to give a ‘squishy’ taste and crushed pretzels to give it a ‘crunchy’ texture, we then slathered the whole lot in chocolate and left it to set. Similarly with the ‘fizzing whizzbees,’ we got hold of a bee shaped mould and filled it with melted chocolate, sprinkling some popping candy over the top it.
The friendly half giant half wizard, whom the trio immediately befriend, offers them ‘rock cakes’ the first time they visit Hagrid in his hut. The rock cakes “almost broke their teeth,” and another time Harry has to abandon the rock cakes after he felt an “ominous cracking noise from one of his back teeth.”  Below is a recipe for:

Hagrid’s Rock Cakes!

Preparation Time


27 minutes

Servings


36 servings

Ingredients


2 cups self-rising flour (or plain flour sifted with 2 tsp baking powder)

Pinch of salt (optional)

1/2 cup butter or margarine

1/2 cup fine granulated sugar

1 cup mixed dried fruit (such as a mixture of moist packs of dried apricots, raisins and cranberries)

Finely grated rind of small orange

1 egg, beaten

3 tablespoons milk

Juice of 1/2 small orange

Instructions


Preheat oven to 425 °F.

Lightly grease baking tray.

Sift flour and salt.

Using pastry blender, cut margarine or butter into the flour.

Add sugar, dried fruit and orange rind. Stir in egg.

Add milk and just enough juice to make a stiff, sticky consistency that will stand in peaks when stirred with a knife.

Put walnut-sized heaps of mixture on baking tray.

Allow them to keep a rough, rocky shape.

Do not flatten or smooth them.

Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes or until golden and firm. Cool on rack. Cool completely for flavor to develop.

To conclude: The Harry potter magical food makes children ‘read’ the food in surprisingly positive ways. This is not to say that they would find these foods tasty, but it is more a form of entertainment for them, a way in which they can delight from disgust and think creatively themselves about food.

 

Thursday 26 March 2015

The Foulsome and Disgusterous Dahl (continued)


Earlier, we looked at Dahl's revolting representation of the 'snozzcumber' in The BFG. We saw how it made children look at food negatively and learned that (surprise surprise!) children are not particularly keen on vegetables. I will now be looking at another well loved classic by Dahl, "The Twits." (1980) It tells the story of a hideous and horrid couple called 'The Twits' who play cruel practical jokes on one another out of hatred and spite. The food which is represented in this book is possibly more horrible and negative than in any other of Dahl's books. When we are introduced to the twits, we are made know of Mr Twit's disgusting eating habits, and how he often gets hideous particles of food trapped in his beard!


In one scene we see Mrs Twit, as part of a horrid practical joke, mix worms in to her husband's spaghetti, claiming that "its a new brand," and "that's why it's so squishy." An adapted recipe for this "wormy spaghetti" can be found in 'Revolting Recipes,' which was published in 1994, after Roald Dahl’s death. His wife (Felicity Dahl) describes how the book was an “interpretation of some of the scrumptious and wonderfully disgusting dishes which appear in Roald Dahl’s books.” Of course, I decided to try out the recipe for "Wormy spaghetti," in fact I added an even more gruesome touch, naming the final dish "wormy spaghetti and dogfood meatballs!" Below is the recipe from the book:

 
It was a fun creation to make, I even used two types of spaghetti sizes to make it more realistic! I got the help of my little brother who found this a disgustingly delightful experience. Of course there weren't really any worms of dogfood in the recipe, but it was fun to pretend so, and although it tasted lovely, all that talk of disgusting squishy worms and slimy dogfood and Mr Twit's horrid beard filled with fermenting morsels of food left us a bit queasy before we had even started!
 
Here is my adaptation of the 'wormy spaghetti:'
 
 
The ingredients for my horrible spaghetti
The "wormy spaghetti and dogfood meatballs"

 
This was a lot of fun to make, it took some time but my little brother and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, we had fun trying to think up of the  most horrid name for this dish and telling others what it was!
 
 
This dish, we unanimously decided, gets awarded a surefire gory rating of: :
out of 5 !!


Comments:
What could be more horrible and more gory than spaghetti containing worms and meatballs made of dog food? Nothing!


 
 

The "Foulsome and Disgusterous" Dahl


The BFG spitting out the 'Snozzcumber'
Roald Dahl is famous for his disgusting and playful imagination, his use of childish humour, and a great many invented words. These aspects usually come together nicely when describing horrible and gory foods, which he often does. I will be looking at handful of the many horrible foods Dahl often explores in his books, see how children react to it, and even try to make my own adapted gory versions!!
Roald Dahl’s The BFG or ‘Big Friendly Giant’ is the “only big friendly giant in Giant country.” He makes friends with a little orphan girl named Sophie. We discover that because he doesn’t eat ‘human beans’ he is not left with much choice and so resorts to eating the dreaded ‘snozzcumber.’ He says woefully how “nothing is growing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable. It’s called the snozzcumber.”  I decided to come with up with an experimental activity and so after gathering a small army of little siblings and little cousins, I sat them down and read to them the passage describing the snozzcumber. I then asked them to come up with an invented food, but that it had to be the worst food they could think of using their five senses to describe the food and to draw a picture along side it.
Below are two examples of what the children came up with:
By Mo (9) 'THE SLINGPOPPER.' Colour: lead grey, blue and green. Has spikes and is 'squishy like a rotten banana'
                                  ... Hmm looks suspiciously like a cucumber or gherkin to me!
By Ibby (5) "The JUMBY"

<------- "Looks like a purple pear with slime and spikes. Tastes like cheesy feet mixed with broccoli and mashed peas. "
 So it tastes like broccoli and peas and looks like a pear/aubergine hybrid... I sense a pattern here....


Though the kids found this activity hilarious and shrieked at each others work with delight, it was hugely fascinating and insightful to see that all of the five children had some sort of gory adaptation of a specific fruit or vegetable, and not any other food. This made me question how fruits and vegetables are depicted within children's literature, and the answer was 'not very positively.' They were inspired by the description of the 'snozzcumber' which itself resembles a 'cucumber' both in name and appearance. Almost all children have an aversion to at least some vegetables and it was more than clear in the depictions of their invented "worst food ever."


 

Wednesday 25 March 2015

Gory Greed and Horrible excess!


Greedy Patrick Star 
Previously, we looked at the connection between poverty and bad food, and so I thought it would be interesting to look at the other end of the spectrum; The idea of food in relation to greed and excess. Is it always good to have any food you desire and of any amount? When does it become excessive? What does it teach young readers about how your relationship with food should be?


Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Charlie Bucket (who we looked at in the previous post) is quite unlike Veruca Salt, Mike Teevee, Augustus Gloop or Violet Beauregarde. He is loved by readers because he is not greedy, excessive, spoiled or gluttonous like all the other characters that all come to a sticky end because of these bad qualities that they possess. We see this in many of Dahl’s other books: Violet Beauregarde  is transformed into a grotesque, inflated blueberry: a somewhat visual depiction of greed, James and the Giant Peach’s James has an enormously fat aunt who is physically flattened in to the ‘right shape’ by the giant peach and Bruce Bogtrotter is humiliated and forced to eat an entire chocolate cake in order to acknowledge his greedy habits. All these examples illustrate Dahl’s disapproval of greed and over indulgence; I believe that it also somewhat acts as a cautionary tale for children with greedy tendencies.
Willy Wonka's five Golden Ticket Winners.

Augustus unbelievably says at one point: “Don’t make me run, I’m full of chocolate!”

When he is in Wonka's chocolate factory he simoly cannot help himself when he comes across a pure chocolate waterfall leading in to a chocolate river. He goes against Wonka's strict request to not go near it, but of course he starts lapping at the river of chocolate but manages to fall right in!
The image of a dirty, sticky, greedy boy contaminating the pure and delicious chocolate river is an unpleasant thought and with the stark imagery of Augustus being trapped tightly in the glass pipes among
 sticky brown liquid .. suddenly the idea of a chocolate river is not so idyllic- it becomes grotesque, and there are connotations of a sewage pipe full of faeces.
Similar to the way in which a child reader can find enjoyment and fulfilment in George feeding his grandmother the medicine, we see Bruce Bogtrotter defy the expectations of adults in the way that he manages to finish the entire chocolate cake much to the surprise and anger of the terrifying Trunchbull whilst all the children look up in shock and adoration. Even when I read this book and watched the film as a child, I found myself rooting for Bruce, and willed for him to finish the whole cake, and feeling that triumph and disgusting glory as he has his last bite and belches loudly with great satisfaction at the end; not because he finished the cake but because it so greatly angered and defied the adults. Likewise in Loovius Poovius, it is a almost always a firm favourite for any child that reads it purely because its just so disgusting, with a constant mention of something a child is not usually allowed to talk about because it is considered ‘bad manners:’ poo. Thus again a child can delight in the sense of rebellion and repelling, base humour.
 
Below is a part of the Oompa Loompas'  cruelly humorous but cautionary rhyme
Augustus goes shooting up the pipe!
 about Augustus:


"This revolting boy, of course,
Was so unutterably vile,
So greedy, foul, and infantile
He left a most disgusting taste
Inside our mouths, and so in haste
We chose a thing that, come what may,
Would take the nasty taste away.
'Come on!' we cried, 'The time is ripe
To send him shooting up the pipe!
Uh oh!!
But don't, dear children, be alarmed;
Augustus Gloop will not be harmed,
Although, of course, we must admit
He will be altered quite a bit.
He'll be quite changed from what he's been,
When he goes through the fudge machine:
Slowly, the wheels go round and round,
The cogs begin to grind and pound;
A hundred knives go slice, slice, slice;
We add some sugar, cream, and spice;
We boil him for a minute more,
Until we're absolutely sure

Is boiled away for once and all.
That all the greed and all the gall....!"
Vesuvius Poovius by Kes Gray (2004)
This rhyme is a perfect example of Dahl's genius ability to effortlessly merge childish and entertaining humour along with a clear didactic element. He is also known for his clever and accurate wordplay- the name "Gloop" holds negative, disgusting and not very refined associations!
 
Another example of food portrayed negatively in terms of greed and excess can be found in the extremely base and revolting, slightly tongue in cheek humour of Kes Gray's Vesuvius Poovius (2004.) This book is about how the citizens of Ancient Rome coped before the invention of the loo.

Though this hilarious illustrated book is mostly about ‘poo’ (much to the delight of young readers- boys in particular…) there is also a scene where we observe the emperor and his wife indulging OVER indulging in a vast feast fit for a kin- well, emperor. They cannot stop!

“Munch by munch, slurp by slurp, and belch by belch, the Emperor and his wife worked their way through the tummy curdling lot.”

Readers can note how the feast is far from delicious, it is revoltingly excessive, and the food itself

does not sound particularly appetising:

“Tuck in!” he smiled. “There’s prune cocktail, sheep’s eye dumplings, eel jelly, frog burgers, beetle pizza, snail squash, crow soup and lots lots more!”

What possibly makes it worse is the author's clever use of juxtaposition: the contrast between tasty foods such as "burgers" and gruesome inedible foods such as "beetles." The imagery of the enormous heaving emperor and his wife stuffing their faces on an almost never ending supply of repellent dishes is far from tempting; on the contrary it is off putting and repulsive- they even debate on whether or not they should carry on eating after nearly falling ill from already having too much! This portrayal of greed and excess far exceeds all notions of food being tempting and delicious to the point that it becomes quite the very opposite. Pass me a sick bucket!


Below is the famous chocolate cake which Bruce Bogtrotter managed to eat all of in front of the entire school: excessively thick and chocolatey, rich and dark… I dare you to try and finish the whole thing! It is in a recipe book inspired by foods that are mentioned in some of Dahl's most famous books.

You will need: 8oz dark chocolate, 6oz butter, 8oz caster sugar, 4tbsp plain flour, 6 med eggs. For the ganache: 8oz dark chocolate, 8oz double cream

1. Preheat oven 180C/350F/Gas mark 4 and line a 20cm round cake tin with greaseproof paper. Make sure use a deep round tin.

2. Melt the chocolate in the microwave on a low heat, stirring every now and then until completely melted. 
3. Mix in the butter and stir until melted. Gradually add in the flour sugar and egg yolks.
4. Whisk the egg whites in a seperate bowl until light and fluffy. Gently fold into the mixture until combined.
5. Pour into the cake tin and bake in the oven for 35-55 mins depending on your oven. We baked ours for 35 mins and then covered with tin foil as it was a little wobbly in the middle and baked for a further 20 mins, checking every 10 mins.
6. Leave to cool in the tin for a while and then turn out onto a cake stand or plate. 
7. Put the chocolate (broken into pieces) and the double cream in a microwaveable bowl and gently heat until the chocolate melts. Stir every now and then to make sure the chocolate doesn't burn. Take out of the microwave and stir rapidly to cool the mixture and so it thickens.
8. Once it begins to thicken pour over the cake and smooth over with the back of a spoon or spatula.
These two books are just small examples of  the huge amount of famous children's book characters who delight in excess and are crippled by their greed, it is almost always portrayed negatively and reinforced as such to children who (mostly innocently and within their nature) can be greedy at times.
Gory rating :  0 out of 5 
- - - - -
Comments:

IT'S CHOCOLATE CAKE GUYS!
(However, I'd rate it higher I was forced to eat the entire thing... *gulp*)



Poverty and gory grub.

Charlie Bucket
Throughout literature we read stories of poor children, starved children, orphaned and malnourished children who have meagre and lacking diets. This often goes hand in hand with portrayals of foods which are mostly sparse, unappetising, unappealing and lacks nourishment and enjoyment. Many well-loved children’s fictional characters are poor or orphaned and so we are drawn to them through sympathy and compassion, because though children may only sometimes be subjected to food that they do not want, they pity the characters who only ever eat horrible unappetising food. Two books and characters I shall explore are Charlie Bucket from Dahls’ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Oliver Twist from Dickens’ famous eponymous novel set in the Victorian era.

Wonka chocolate bar
Throughout literature we read stories of poor children, starved children, orphaned and malnourished children who have meagre and lacking diets. This often goes hand in hand with portrayals of foods which are mostly sparse, unappetising, unappealing and lacks nourishment and enjoyment. Many well-loved children’s fictional characters are poor or orphaned and so we are drawn to them through sympathy and compassion, because though children may only sometimes be subjected to food that they do not want, they pity the characters who only ever eat horrible unappetising food. Two books and characters I shall explore are Charlie Bucket from Dahls’ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Oliver Twist from Dickens’ famous eponymous novel set in the Victorian era.

Horrible "watery" cabbage soup.
Chocolate holds a great importance in Charlie’s life. It is symbolic for him and it is all he dreams of eating, it contrasts greatly with the cheap, nutritious and never ending supply of cabbage soup. Chocolate is something one eats for pleasure and not for its nutritional value, it is essentially excess and indulgence, something impoverished Charlie does not have the pleasure or wealth to experience. I have personally never tried dreaded cabbage soup, so I felt that now would be a good time. I followed a recipe from none other than…

Back to Mrs Beeton again! Below is her recipe for cabbage soup, which we can only hope is more palatable than the watery inedible soup Charlie was subjected to…
Cabbage Soup:
118. INGREDIENTS.—1 large cabbage, 3 carrots, 2 onions, 4 or *5 slices of lean bacon*, salt and pepper to taste, 2 quarts of medium stock No. 105.

Mode.—Scald the cabbage, exit it up and drain it. Line the stewpan with the bacon, put in the cabbage, carrots, and onions; moisten with skimmings from the stock, and simmer very gently, till the cabbage is tender; add the stock, stew softly for half an hour, and carefully skim off every particle of fat. Season and serve.
Time.—1-1/2 hour. Average cost, 1s. per quart.
Seasonable in winter.
Sufficient for 8 persons

*I omitted the bacon in my recipe due to religious reasons.
My homemade cabbage soup:
Before- (I had a taste at least!)
After- ....straight in the bin (oops)
The recipe was fairly easy to follow but could certainly have done with a lot more seasoning!
Gory rating :2 out of 5 
☠- - -

Comments: No wonder poor Charlie craved chocolate constantly, after living on a diet of this stuff for so long poor thing! I'm off to get myself a chocolate bar, see you later!

Oliver Twist is one of Dickens’ most famous characters, a poor orphan child and who lived in the Victorian times, suffering at the hands of the cruel and labour intensive workhouse. His diet? He was "issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week and half a roll on Sundays." He his famous for his humble request of:    ---------------> 

 I decided to make my own "Gruel," which is defined as "a thin porridge."  
This recipe is based on the ingredients used in an 18th century workhouse: (http://cookit.e2bn.org/historycookbook/121-gruel.html)

..."Please Sir, can I have some more??"
 Ingredients:
- 3 dessert spoonfuls of oatmeal
- 1 pint of water 

- A pinch of salt
Instructions:                                1. Mix the oatmeal with a little cold water to make a paste
2. Put the rest of the water in a pan                   
3. Add the mixture and boil for 10 minutes 
4. Add the salt
The sheer simplicity of the meal probably indicates how very unappetising it all seems. Just like the cabbage soup it was very easy and quick to make but perfectly horrendous to eat. Poor Oliver! 

Gruel for everyone!

My homemade Gruel:

Comments:
At least the cabbage soup had some sort of flavour- but this gruel was just tasteless, a horrible and gloopy yet watery texture, salty instead of sweet, just a big NO! It all just lacked flavour, and I never ate enough to have that 'full' feeling. At least the bin had two full meals!

LEFT- three simple ingredients of oats, water and salt.                   RIGHT- the miserable gruel which I concocted
....So, what have I learned? Poverty (in literature at least) almost always means miserable and tasteless food, but we must acknowledge that both of the 'poor' protagonists are highly likeable characters; Charlie has experienced true hunger and as such is humble and not demanding and Oliver becomes brave and courageous, choosing to face humiliation from his elders because of being pushed from such extreme hunger.
Charlie, who at some point in the book experiences starvation would no doubt have been glad to survive on a diet of ‘cabbagy’ meals, but a child reader would only sympathise with Charlie, as they are more likely to I child can rea only imagine they can imagine the feeling of eating something highly unpleasant, but not the feeling of starving.  Most children are drawn to these characters and we feel as though we want them to thrive and do well because of the difficulties and starvation they have faced. Most child readers are in a far different situation, they may experience a sense of gratitude and 'read' hunger differently after seeing what little these characters have to eat and so they remain ever popular characters.
I will give this 'meal'  a gory rating of:  4 out of 5 

☠-
 


 

Monday 23 March 2015

Medicine in Literature



 Ghastly medicine in Literature!
(Above) Mary Poppins

“Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…!” the rosy cheeked Mary Poppins cheerfully sang in the Disney adapted version of the original book series by P.L Travers. In the time before every medicine was mostly available in a pristine and tasteless pill form, we had to endure the morbid and cringe worthy act of swallowing down gloopy and bitter liquid remedies. Myself (and possibly a great many others) would have shared my not very fond memories of having to pinch my nose and clamp my mouth in protest as mum shoved the luminous banana coloured putrid smelling gloop in my squealing face. Medicine in literature does not have a particularly positive reputation either, whether it’s marvelled at by children in all its disgusting glory or written in a very practical recipe form to force feed to children in outdated recipe books, I will take a brief look at Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, The Tale of Peter Rabbit and George’s Marvellous Medicine to see the negative portrayal (if any at all) of medicines in these books.
 
The Three Good Bunnies Eat Their Supper

Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, a series of whimsical little picture books following the story of a mischievous bunny, printed in 1902 is meant for a much younger audience. It follows the naughty and disobedient young Peter rabbit being chased about the garden of Mr McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother who puts him to bed after dosing him with camomile tea. Below is a quote of the end of the book:
"I am sorry to say that Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peter! One teaspoonful to be taken at bed-time. But Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper."
For me, the ending almost seems like a cautionary tale for young readers, with the prospect of missing dinner and replacing it with unpleasant medicine acting as a deterrent for naughty children planning mischief in the day. The medicine rather seems like a form of punishment for naughty Peter rabbit. 

George’s Marvellous Medicine is a playful story written by well-known and hugely popular children’s author Roald Dahl. It tells the story of a young boy who concocts a medicine to give to his “grumptious” grandmother to “cure her of her nastiness.” The reader can observe a somewhat reversal of roles in the two children’s books.  In The Tale of peter Rabbit we see Peter’s mother (who is the elder) giving the medicine to Peter (who is the child,)  whereas in George’s Marvellous Medicine, we see a role reversal; though the medicine is given for the same reason (as a punishment), it is the child giving the medicine to the elder (his grandmother)  this time, so for the child reader this works as a sort of gratification; children can delight in the idea that horrible medicine is not something that’s not only for naughty children, it can be for adults too. Traditionally it is the mother, or adults authority to give the medicine, The very idea of a child making medicine is exciting, as children are traditionally warned against going anywhere near the medicine cupboard Roald Dahl gives a child the authority to do so this time and so young readers can feel the excitement of child rebelliousness.
 I knew it would be simply impossible to even attempt to recreate George's "brutal and bewitching," "spicy and staggering," "fierce and frenzied" concoction containing ingredients such as his father's shaving foam, anti-freeze, denture cleaner, curry powder, nit cream, and shoe polish to name but a few! I instead decided to follow one of Mrs Beeton's medicine recipes written in the morbidly titled chapter: 'The Doctor.' Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management was first published in 1859 a guide to running all aspects of a British Victorian household. Her writing style is very practical and no- nonsense. I found that as with many of her recipes, Beeton never really describes the taste of any of her food and lacks any description regarding the final result or what to expect from of any of the recipes. This, paired with somewhat old-fashioned ingredient measurements meant that I somewhat improvised a little on the recipe. (for example, due to religious reasons I omitted the use of alcohol in the recipe, and had to check how much a “quart” was.) Below, is the recipe from her book:
 

(Above) To Cure A Cold by Mrs. Beeton
(Above) All of the ingredients

Getting hold of “stick liquorice” proved to be a great deal trickier than I had originally anticipated. After a search through at least two supermarkets, greengrocers and a newsagents proved fruitless I went to the only person I thought would know: mum. I discovered that the liquorice root is also native to South Asia and is known as “mulethi” in the urdu language and was in fact easy to get hold of from Asian foodstores. My mum has always been a believer in natural remedies and I grew up drinking medicines made from ingredients in the food cupboard. The final result I was left with after making Mrs Beeton’s cold remedy was greatly similar both in taste and appearance to the herbal medicinal drink I grew up with, called kaava: made with boiling green tea leaves, cardamom pods, fennel seeds and cinnamon sticks.



The two drinks compared: Mrs B's remedy (R) Kaava (L)
I was expecting it to be a revolting concoction but was greatly surprised by how sweet and not very awful tasting it was. It did after all contain sweet liquorice, raisins and sugar. I did not enjoy the distinctly aniseed-y taste of the liquorice and would certainly not drink it out of enjoyment. Would I instead prefer to settle with George’s supposedly marvellous medicine containing (among many other ‘ingredients’): horse medicine, extra hot chilli sauce and shaving foam? No I will settle comfortably with Mrs Beeton’s cold remedy thank you very much!
All in all I shall give this cold remedy a gory rating of: out of 5 
 - - - - 
Comments:
What can I say? It was surprisingly soothing! Nice one Mrs B!

Click the links below to see how I got on with making Mrs B's cold remedy!

All in all I learned that medicine is not always necessary, as we see in these books, medicine serves more as a punishment and a deterrent from bad behaviour rather than a necessity;  given mostly to children by an adult. Essentially, medicine is largely portrayed in a negative light, in taste, as well as appearance. Though sometimes illustrated as being 'good for you' it isn't necessarily perceived as being 'tasty' and is often associated with negative behaviours and punishment. Mrs Beeton’s recipe  for a ‘cold remedy’ was just that, a recipe. The only similarity I could draw was that Mrs Beeton instructs mothers to dose the child with the remedy before bed, just as Peter Rabbit’s mother did. Kaava anyone?