[Herbalist] help?

[Wes Will]

At 08:32 PM 10/27/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Does anybody have Hildegard of Bengen's brain cookie recipe? I have lost
>my copy, and it's getting to the season I love those.
>Elewyiss

Do you mean "Nerve Biscuits"?  or "Joy Cookies"?

"In a treatise on medicine, she provides a recipe for spice cookies:  'Eat
them often,' she says, 'and they will calm every bitterness of heart and
mind -- and your hearing and senses will open.  Your mind will be joyous,
and your senses purified, and harmful humours will diminish . . ."

The recipe follows; however, it is titled "St. Hildegard's Cookies of Joy,"
with the note:  "(Recipe reconstructed and adapted from Hildegard's circa
1157 treatise Physica:  Liber Simplicis Medicinae."  The note following the
recipe states, "Recipe researched for Sound & Spirit by Jeffrey Nelson with
the help of a gracious doctoral student who wished to remain anonymous."

The recipe given follows:

3/4 cup butter or margarine (1 1/2 sticks)
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves

"Let butter soften and then cream it with the brown sugar.  Beat in the egg.
Sift the dry ingredients.  Add half the dry ingredients and mix.  Add the
other half and mix thoroughly.  Dough may be chilled to make it workable.
Heat oven to 350 (degrees).  Form walnut sized balls of dough, place on
greased and floured cookie sheet and press flat.  Bake 12-15 minutes (till
edges of are golden brown.)  Cool for 5 minutes, remove from cookie sheet
and finish cooling on racks."