by Tiéphaine Thomason (@teaphaine)
This is the second post in a three-part series for the Doing History Advent Calendar on the history of the senses and the gifts of the Magi.
Myrrh is the second ‘ingredient’ discussed in our series on gifts by the Magi to the infant Christ. It is a fragrant resin, often seen as the third item presented by the Magi and associated with Balthazar. The resin is native to the East of Africa and the Gulf region. Myrrh typically makes an appearance across Abrahamic scripture as an incense, but it was seen throughout much of the ancient, mediæval, and early modern world as possessing medicinal qualities.
The 1569 French tract Traicté de la nature et curation des playes de pistolle, harquebouse et autres bastons à feu by the physician Julien Le Paulmier de Grantesnil includes myrrh in a treatment for wounds from firearms.[1] For a ‘baulme excellent pour toutes playes de Harquebouse & Pistolle’ ‘an excellent balm for all wounds from arquebuses (a type of fifteenth-century portable long gun) and wheellock pistols’, it suggests taking four ounces of myrrh and mixing this, among other things, with mushrooms and saffron.[2] One would then ‘pulverise this well’, add it to a phial with some honey, bury the phial for two weeks, before adding egg whites to the mix. This could finally be dissolved in wine (which, mercifully, is antiseptic) and applied to the wound.
The use of myrrh as a sixteenth-century herbal remedy seems to have retained some currency in French popular imagination. In the nineteenth-century, the wine merchant Alexandre Le Grand claimed to have discovered in an old library a sixteenth-century manuscript on herbal remedies from the benedictine abbey of Fécamp.[3] Developing the recipe further with a chemist, he began to produce his own liqueur ‘Bénédictine’, named after the Order that ran the abbey. He claimed the liqueur to have medicinal qualities. If the exact composition of Bénédictine remains a secret (and the story of its creation a likely invention), one of its many ingredients is myrrh. The liqueur has a grassy warmth to it, which has made it a popular addition to a number of cocktails. The most famous of these is the Singapore Sling, created in 1915 at the Long Bar in Singapore.[4]
Bénédictine – and by extension, myrrh – might not have been in the original 1915 cocktail, but it is part of the Long Bar’s current recipe and is fundamental to giving it the pleasant ‘herbal’ taste that is so crucial to the Sling. If you are ever in Singapore, you should, of course, head to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel. If this is a little far for you, we’ve drawn up a recipe for the Singapore Sling below, lifted from the International Bartenders’ Association:
30 ml of Gin
15 ml Cherry Sangue Morlacco
7.5 ml Cointreau
7.5 ml DOM Bénédictine
120 ml Fresh Pineapple Juice
14 ml French Lime Juice
10 ml Grenadine Syrup
‘A dash Angostura bitters’
Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain and serve.[5]
If this looks like too much of a ‘faff’, the BBC suggests a much more manageable 25 ml of Gordon’s London Dry Gin, 25 ml of cherry brandy, 25 ml of Bénédictine, 50 ml of pineapple juice, 25 ml of lime juice – which you would then stir with ice and bitters.[6]
For those of you avoiding alcohol this Christmas, you can make a delightful mocktail with lime juice, pineapple juice, maraschino cherry juice and grenadine syrup. You will, of course, be missing out on the ‘myrrh’ from the Bénédictine, but an alcohol-free substitute to the liqueur is long overdue – so do experiment!
Cover Image: Singapore Sling at the Raffles’s Long Bar. Image accessed on 16 December 2024 via the Raffles Hotel Website: https://www.raffles.com/singapore/dining/long-bar/
[1] J. Le Paulmier, Traicté de la nature et curation des playes de pistolle, harquebouse et autres bastons à feu ; ensemble, les remèdes des combustions et bruslures externes et superficielles (Caen: P. Philippe, 1569), Bibliothèque nationale de France.
[2] Ibid., pp. 33-35.
[3] ‘Une Visite à la Bénédictine de l’Abbaye de Fécamp’ in Le Pyrénéen, 20 December 1891, accessed via Gallica.
[4] The Long Bar’s page on the Raffles website proudly claims to be ‘Where the Singapore Sling was Born’.
[5] See the International Bartenders Association website: https://iba-world.com/iba-cocktail/singapore-sling/, accessed 16 December 2024.
[6] The BBC suggests the following recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/singapore-sling, accessed 16 December 2024.
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