Honey Cough Medicine Recipe

An old prescription for a cough medicine recipe with honey that still works today!

An old prescription for a cough medicine recipe with honey that still works today!

Honey Cough Medicine Recipe

Between honey and whiskey, I definitely have more honey readily available but a recent gift of whiskey made me think of this old cough medicine recipe and whiskey sours.

I remember working in London many years ago during a rainstorm during the 50th Anniversary of D-Day. We had worked straight through three shifts. I had laryngitis from all of the talking and we were dead tired and soaking wet before our team made it back to our hotel. We were so tired we couldn't sleep so we agreed to change out of wet clothes and meet at the bar for a night cap.

By the time I made it to the bar, there was a whiskey sour waiting for me, prescribed by our resident doctor for my sore throat. Or so they told me at the time. I am not a hard liquor drinker but I was told to down it in the interests of getting better quickly. Boy, did that whiskey sour taste good!

The next morning I had a little of my voice back but, better yet, I was feeling rested so I decided to peek at the recipe for a whiskey sour. Look at how similar this Bon Appetit whiskey sour recipe is to the old cough syrup recipe with honey:

Whiskey Sour Recipe

  • 2 ounces bourbon

  • ¾ ounce fresh lemon juice

  • ¾ ounce simple syrup

"Combine bourbon, lemon juice, and simple sugar syrup in a cocktail shaker. Fill shaker with ice, cover, and shake vigorously until outside of shaker is very cold, about 20 seconds. Strain cocktail through a Hawthorne strainer or a slotted spoon into an old-fashioned or rocks glass filled with ice."

A few days later, someone else ordered me a whiskey sour. I took one sip and didn't finish it, it did not taste as good as when I had been soaking wet and speechless.

So go ahead, make yourself a whiskey sour. It will never taste better than when you need it for a sore throat and use honey instead of the sugar syrup mix.

Did I mention I don't drink?

Charlotte