# Confection of alkermes

**Confectio alkermes**

**Known today as.** A cordial confection colored with kermes, with apple juice, rose water, sugar, ambergris, and gold.

Kind: Compound

## What was it used for?

The great cordial: to comfort the heart and revive the faint.

## What does modern science say?

Sugar, scent, and an insect dye. The Italian liqueur alchermes, coloured with the same insect, which Chambers’s *Cyclopaedia* took for a modification of the confection, still soaks the sponge of the dessert zuppa inglese.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **kermesic acid**: the red of the kermes insect, later cochineal
- **sucrose**: the bulk
- **ambrein and muscone**: ambergris and musk
- **gold leaf and pearl**: 
- **cinnamon and rose water**: 

**Mechanism.** A sugar confection coloured with an insect dye and scented with musk, ambergris, and cinnamon, to which Culpeper gave every cordial virtue while warning that it might prove “too heavy for the purse.” The Italian liqueur alchermes, coloured with kermes, was taken by Chambers’s *Cyclopaedia* for a modification of it.

**Dose.** Culpeper gave ten grains to children and twenty or thirty to men, mixed with other cordials.

**Standing.** In the London Pharmacopoeia of 1653, after Mesue’s confection of kermes; Chambers’s *Cyclopaedia* of 1827 still described the confection; a liqueur since.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Florence.** The friars of Santa Maria Novella were already making alchermes in Florence in the fifteenth century, the Italian Wikipedia records, and the Medici prized it.

## Sources

- Culpeper, N. (1653). *Pharmacopœia Londinensis*.
- Wikipedia, “Alchermes,” en.wikipedia.org (read 2 October 2026).
- Wikipedia (it), “Alchermes,” it.wikipedia.org (read 2 October 2026).
- Wikipedia, “Kermes (dye),” en.wikipedia.org (read 2 October 2026).
- Wikipedia, “Ambergris,” en.wikipedia.org (read 2 October 2026).
- Wikipedia, “Musk,” en.wikipedia.org (read 2 October 2026).
- Mesue (1589). *I libri di Gio. Mesue de i semplici purgativi, et delle medicine composte*, ed. G. Rossetto. Venice.
- Gentilcore, D. (2016). *Food and Health in Early Modern Europe*. Bloomsbury.

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*Confection of alkermes.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/confection-of-alkermes

Historical description, not medical advice.