Recipe: To Make Sirrop of Violets

Hannah Woolley's recipe "To make Sirrop of Violets" is one of several recipes in the exhibition for this calming medicine.

Select the links in the transcription below or at the right to learn more about violet's in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Galenic theory and the four humors, Robert Boyle's experiments on color, and to see a video on the making of this medicine.

Pick your Violets very clean (1), and beat them well in a Mortar, then strain them, and to one pint of the juyce take one quarter of a pint of Spring-water; put it into the Mortar with the stamped Violets (2) which you have strained, stamp them together a while, and strain the Water well from them, and mix them with your other juyce; then put it into a long Gally-pot, and to each pint of juyce put in one pound of double Refined Sugar; let it stand close covered for the space of twelve hours; then put in a little quantity of Juyce of Lemmon, that will make it look purely transparent (3); then set your Gally-pot into a Kettle of seething-water covered, till you find it to be thick enough; then set it by till it is cold, then put it up.