A warm infusion of ginger and turmeric, honey and lemon, to drink in the evening. Spicy, slightly bitter, comforting — the healing gesture of a chemist for whom plants were a pharmacy.

Why this dish? Alice devoted her short life to transforming a medicinal oil — chaulmoogra — into a treatment for leprosy. This spicy and soothing infusion, made from roots reputed to be strengthening in Hawai‘i, evokes her quest: to draw from the plant kingdom what can relieve the body.

I am known for the chaulmoogra oil, that stubborn substance I learned to make injectable to relieve the sick — it is the work of my life, brief though it was. But at home, when fatigue overtook me, I relied on the island's roots: ginger and turmeric, which I boiled with a little honey and lemon. It is bitter, I grant you, but it sets you right. The remedy is never far from the kitchen, you see — you just need to know what you mix.

How it was made : Ginger and turmeric, brought by Asian migrations, were part of the domestic pharmacopoeia in Hawai‘i as in many Pacific cultures. They were boiled to make strengthening decoctions. This is distinct from Alice Ball's scientific work on chaulmoogra, which belonged to laboratory chemistry.

The contemporary twist : Pour the strained decoction over hot frothed milk: your tonic becomes a turmeric "golden latte", a star in today's cafés.

Alice Ball · Charactorium