Wherever you are,
someone has been here before.
Not sleeping. Coming down with something. A stomach that will not settle. These are not interesting problems, and almost every person who has ever lived has had them.
So we went and asked. What follows is what households actually make — in Seoul and Kerala, in Marrakesh and Mexico City and Hanoi — kept in their own names, in their own words, with the reason that kitchen gives. We have added one thing nobody else seems to: what each of them tastes like. You will not make a drink you cannot imagine drinking.
45 preparations, from 27 places, for 4 of the oldest complaints there are.
What is troubling you
I can't sleep
Eleven cups from eleven places, for the nights that will not end. What the world drinks when it cannot sleep.
11 kitchens
I'm coming down with something
The first scratch in the throat, answered from twelve kitchens. Honey, ginger, steam — and the surprising places they diverge.
12 kitchens
My stomach is unsettled
Bloating, heaviness, the meal that will not move. Twelve kitchens — and one botanical family that four continents chose independently.
12 kitchens
I'm blocked up
Nine kitchens, seven mechanisms, near-total agreement. What the world does about the most universal and least discussed complaint there is.
10 kitchens
Where these came from
A note on how this is written. We report what a tradition does, in that tradition’s own terms — we do not translate other people’s medicine into ours, and we do not rename anyone’s remedy. Where a preparation is simply what a household drinks rather than something anyone prescribes, we say so. Where the traditions disagree, we tell you that too, because it is usually the most useful part.
None of this is medical advice, and every page ends by telling you where the edge of a home remedy is. If you are worried, or if something is not shifting, please see someone.
With warmth, from a great many kitchens.