Horehound is a wonderful herb, an unappreciated herb and one of my favorite herbs. It has numerous uses both medicinally and magickally. It is easy to grow being tolerant of many climate zones, moisture and light conditions and soil types. It is an excellent choice for a drought tolerant garden too. Although it is not native to this continent it can be found growing in the wild all over the place. You see, it was such an important herb to European settlers that they brought it with them to the New World and its inherent hardiness and adaptability allowed it to naturalize here. It is relatively inexpensive to buy and not as difficult to find as many of the herbs that witches trend towards, although in most cases you will not find it a corner grocery store; of course that will depend on your corner grocery store.
Horehound is thought to be sacred to Horus, Isis and Osiris although personally I find it most appropriate to Horus but that’s just me. Magickally it is useful for warding off negative and malicious energy, breaking spells, clearing away obstacles to inspiration, preventing theft, keeping secrets, honesty, fidelity, retention of knowledge and working with animals. With all of this going for it you’d think it would be more popular than it is.
All herb workers have herbs that they just naturally have an affinity for and horehound is one of mine both magickally and medicinally. I love the scent and feel of the fresh leaves and I find its energy very easy to tap into and work with. I use it dried, fresh, infused and tinctured.
Medicinally it has a long history of use, back to the Romans at least, as a remedy for all sorts of coughs, sore throats and chest congestion and digestive complaints. Sugar and honey syrups were and are at least as popular as infusions when it came to the methods of administering this soothing and healing herb which makes sense due to the fact that horehound is such a bitter herb. The syrups evolved into a hard candy or lozenge which overtime became the one of the most popular ways to partake of the medicinal properties of the herb.
Horehound candy is as much an old-fashioned treat as it is an old-fashioned remedy; one that could be found not only in drug stores but also general stores and candy shops. My father is rather fond of the dark brown sweet yet bitter confection that was definitely something that was very common in his youth. Those of you who are of my generation may have some few faint memories of the candy but few successive generations have ever tasted the candy or even seen it; especially those who grew up in large urban areas. Its taste is not one that everyone will find appealing but it is certainly a taste of times gone by. You can still find horehound candy in boutique stores seeking to capture the appeal of old-fashioned shops but in general it is not widely available.
Seeing as I had a rather abundant harvest of horehound last autumn I decided that I would try my hand at making horehound candy. I thought it would make an excellent Yule gift for my dad and others and it would also be handy to keep about for cold and flu season. Even though I am rather proficient in the kitchen I had no experience in making hard candy. Truthfully the fact that I had never made it actually made it an even more appealing quest; something of an adventure if you will.
I started by doing some research and what I learned fairly quickly is that there are very few hard and fast rules. I searched the internet and my own collection of cookbooks and I did indeed find many, many recipes for horehound candy as well as all sorts of other hard candies. While I seldom follow any recipe exactly it is often very helpful to have a reference point to start from. I thought that there would be some basic recipe, some general guideline as to proportions either in reference to the amount of herbs to use in the infusion or to the ratio of infusion to sugar. What I found was that there was little similarity in the recipes; every recipe whether it was attributed to someone’s granny or Aunt Bessie was completely different. What I did learn from all of my research was that basically all you need is a bunch of sugar of some sort, an herbal infusion, a thermometer and some time and patience to make old-fashioned horehound candy.
All types of sugar can apparently be used either alone or in various combinations. When I say all types I do mean all types: white or brown granulated, corn syrup, molasses, honey, etc, etc. The proportions of water to fresh or dried herbs used to make the infusion were as varied as the amount and variations of the sugars in the many recipes. My first infusion attempt was way too strong and had to be diluted by half.
I include a thermometer as being necessary for this task but in truth hard candy was being made long before candy thermometers were readily available. You see the candy must be cooked to a certain temperature which is referred to as the hard crack stage to achieve the hard aspect of the finished candy and while the correct stage can be determined by dropping small amounts into a container of cold water and observing the result, but it is a lot easier to just use a thermometer; at least until a certain level of experience is obtained. You see it takes quite a bit of time to get the candy syrup to the correct stage and if I’m going to spend that much time on a project I want to have the best possible outcome. Once the correct stage is reached your next challenge will be forming the syrup into candy. Again there are various ways to achieve this; pulling and forming, molding, pouring on a slab and scoring before it gets too hard.
As it turned out, much of the process depended on my own cunning and happily it was such a great success. In fact it was such a great success that I have now created all sorts of other hard candies; candies of a more magickal nature. The thought occurred to me that if one could make hard candies for medicinal and/or confectionery purposes why not for magickal or spiritual purposes. Why not a prosperity, love or a protection candy? Why not an Isis or a Morrigan candy? Okay, maybe not a Morrigan candy, that would probably not taste to good but you get the idea. I now have recipes for magickal candy, God and Goddess candy and recipes for Sabbat candies. So many possibilities, so little time!
So the point of all this is that hopefully it illustrates that you can bring the magickal into the mundane in many, many ways. On the other hand, I hope that some of you will give horehound a try in your magickal and medicinal work; if you do I think you will be pleased.
Blessings
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the thought of a Morrighan candy :)
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