Benton County, Tennessee Genealogy


Old Cures and Recipes

My grandmother Sarah Belle Forrest, gave my mother sugar and kerosene for the croup. add kerosene to a spoon of sugar. Not recommending that now! Also she gave her a little dab of Vick's salve to put in her mouth, not recommending this either, as I tried it as a child and promptly got sick.

Submitted by Lori


Preventative of Scarlet Fever

Extract belladonna (pure), three grains; cinnamon-water, one drachm; distilled water, seven drachms. Mix, label poison, and give the child for a dose as many drops as the years of his age

A Simple Remedy for Dysentery

Black or green tea steeped in boiling water and sweetened with loaf sugar

Concentrated Lye Soap

All at and grease from the kitchen should be carefully saved, and should be made into soap before accumulating and becoming offensive.

Boil for six hours ten gallons of lye made of green wood ashes. Then add eight or ten pounds of grease, and continue to boil it. If thick or ropy, add more lye till the grease is absorbed. This is ascertained by dropping a spoonful in a glass of water, and if grease remains it will show on the water.

Calf's Head Soup

Tape a large calf's head and boil it with four gallons water and a little salt; when tender, bone and chop it fine, keeping out the brains, and put the meat back in the pot and boil down to a tureenful

1 Tablespoonful mustard
1 Teaspoonful black pepper
1 Teaspoonful powdered cloves
1 Teaspoonful mace
1 Teaspoonful nutmeg

Brown a cup of flour to thicken and just as the soup is dished, add one cup walnut catsup, and one cup port or claret wine.

The brains must be beaten up with an egg, fried in little cakes, and dropped in the tureen.

Recipe For Putting Up Butter

2 Quarts best common salt
1 Ounce pulverized saltpetre
1 Ounce white sugar

Work the butter over three times, the last time adding an ounce of the listed mixture to every pound butter. Of course, the butter is salted, when first made. Make the butter into rolls and wrap in cloths or pack in jars, within four inches of the top of each jar. If the latter is done, fill the jars with brine and tie up closely. if the former is preferred, drop the rolls into brine, prepared as follows:

To every gallon brine that will bar an egg, add one pound white sugar and one half ounce saltpetre. Boil well and skim. Keep brine closely covered.

If you have any old cures or recipes you would like to add, email Betty Brooks


Return to Benton County Genealogy page

County Host Betty Brooks