This concoction was considered an aphrodisiac of remarkable potency.
A cogently recommended prescription in the famous Hindu manual, the Ananga-Ranga, consists of the juice of the plant bhuya-Kokali, dried in the sun, and mixed with ghee or clarified butter, honey, and candied sugar. This potion, it is urged, is taken with great pleasurable anticipation.
In Arabia, a highly recommended beverage, designed to strengthen and maintain amatory energy, is camel’s milk in which honey has been poured. The prescription requires consecutive and regular application.
Identical in intent, and somewhat similar in ingredients, is a kind of broth prescribed by the Sheikh Nefzawi, the erotologist. It consists of onion juices, together with purified honey. This mixture is heated until only the consistency of the honey remains. Then it is cooled, water is added, and finally pounded chick-peas. To be taken in a small dose, advises Nefzawi, during cold spells of weather, and before retiring to bed, and for one day only. The result, he promises, will be startlingly successful.
A Turkish recipe recommends olibanum, which is frankincense, mixed with rose water, along with camphor, myrrh, and musk, all pounded and fricated together. The resultant mixture is sealed hermetically in a glass. Then it is left for a day or two in the sun. Now the preparation is ready for use: as a spray over the hands in washing, or on the body, or on the clothing, with consequent impacts on the person and on the erotogenic areas.
In the Orient, honey normally and regularly takes the place occupied by sugar in Western countries. Hence honey is a common ingredient in many foods, pastries and drinks. Basically, it appears repeatedly in prescriptions designed as love-potions. It is, to take an instance, frequently mentioned by Avicenna, the eleventh century Arab philosopher, physician, and libertine, as well as by the erotologist the Sheikh Nefzawi. Honey, compounded with pepper, or with ginger, or with cubebs, in various proportions and variously formed into a consistent brew, is a standard recipe in the amatory pharmacopoeia of the East.