Common Holiday Spices, Flavors, and Nuts and their Traditional Medicinal Qualities

Abstract

The holiday and winter seasons have common ingredients, usually with bold, warming flavors. The holiday bread, cookie, and cake recipes call for spices and flavorings like nutmeg, ginger, vanilla, and clove or nuts like walnuts and almonds. Historically however, these ingredients were prescribed for a variety of ailments in botanicals and herbals. This post highlights a few of these ingredients from botanicals in the Health Sciences and Human Services Library's Historical Collections Department.