Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment

for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation,

and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation.

From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome to backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines.

I'm Nathan Connelly.

I'm Brian Balla.

I'm Ed Ayers.

If you're new to the podcast, Nathan, Brian, our colleague Joanne Freeman and I are all

historians.

And each week, we explore the history of a topic that's in the news.

Brian and Ed, I'm going to start off today with some old time recipes.

I talked to a historian named David Courtwright recently.

He was doing some archival research a while back and happened to thumb through some

19th century cookbooks.

He noticed something a little odd.

What you discover right away is that they're not just about how you make the beans

or how you make the pork chops.

There's always a section of medical recipes in the back.

Now, some of these 19th century home curers might sound pretty familiar.

Think about your grandmother's chicken soup for a cold, for instance, or herbal tea to

settle an upset stomach.

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