This cough syrup tastes good enough to give young children; it is mild and safe enough to give babies, yet effective against tickly and persistent coughs as well as being a useful tool against childhood diarrhoea and gastritis.

The preserving agent and base for this ‘syrup’ is, glycerine or glycerol, which created by extracting triglycerides from plant or sometimes animal sources and treating them with alcohol. The resulting viscous liquid tastes sweet but behaves in the body as a fat as opposed to a sugar. Try to source a vegetable glycerol that does not contain palm oil.

Basic Ingredients

• 2 parts infused glycerine
• 1 part decoction
• Fennel or Rose water
• Vitamin C powder

Basic Method

• Infuse warm glycerine with dried herbs
• Make a cold gloopy mallow infusion
• Combine ingredients
• Bottle and label

Time required

Preparation, straining and combing may take less than an hour . However, this recipe works best when herbs are infused for at least 12 hours before straining. If you are delivering a demonstration in ‘workshop time’, you will need to use ingredients that you ‘prepared earlier’.

Ratios and proportions

A successful glycerol – i.e. one that preserves the plant material without going off, needs to be no more than a third or (roughly) 30% water.

Makes roughly 3 litres

• 2 litres of glycerine
• 900 mls of water
• 100mls of rose or fennel water
• 100g of fennel seeds
• 100g of cinnamon sticks
• 60g of dried Elderflower 0R dried Inula
• 60g of marshmallow powder
• 3 level tea spoons of vitamin C

Makes roughly 1.5 litres

• 1 litre of glycerine
• 450mls of water
• 50mls of fennel or rose water
• 50g of fennel seeds
• 50g of cinnamon sticks
• 30g of dried Elderflower OR dried Inula
• 30g of marshmallow powder
• 1.5 tea spoons of vitamin C

Method

Infusing the glycerite

All the ingredients contain valuable volatile oils which will evaporate if heated two vigorously. On the other hand, the cinnamon and inula especially , need a bit of heat and time, for extraction in to the glycerol to take place.

My solution to this to combine the glycerine and dried herbs in a heavy iron croc pot and leave in the warming oven of my solid fuel burner for 24 hours. A very low oven or bain marie/double boiler may deliver the same result. Just be sure to keep the lid on and not let the infusing glycerol get too hot.

Strain either through muslin or use a herb/cider press.

Some folk may prefer to infuse each of the dried ingredients separately and combine them at the end.

You will find that when you have pressed the glycerine from the herbs, the resulting pressings have more to give. My tip is to boil them up hard, strain , allow to cool and use for the water content to be added to the mallow powder in the next step.

Creating the marshmallow Gloop

Mixing the marshmallow powder with water is like making a roux sauce - you have to be careful that the mixture doesn’t end up lumpy.

1. Start by mixing the mallow powder into a paste , using the rose or fennel water. Make up to a litre by slowly adding warm water – or more ideally a cooled decoction of the fennel, cinnamon, and inula that was used to make the glycerite. Stir vigorously so that all the powder is dissolved.
2. Leave to stand at room temperature for at least 12 hours.
3. Strain through muslin.

Combine the ingredients

1. Pour the infused glycerine, the marshmallow decoction into a large mixing bowl and beat vigorously. You will need to do this for several minutes to insure the mixtures have combined sufficiently.
2. Add the vitamin C and stir again.

Bottling and labelling

Pour into 100ml brown plastic syrup bottles. This may be more of an art than it sounds as the mixture will be very gloopy.

Apply three labels:

1. small ingredient label in English.
2. Cough syrup and instruction label in chosen languages.
3. Visual cough syrup sticker.