I wonder what Hippocrates would have made of our propensity to reach for a little sachet of powdered "lemon" every time we're laid low by a cold. The man who famously coined the phrase "let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food" would have undoubtedly been less baffled by parents spooning the hot panacea of chicken broth into their little sniffly ones than by that fluorescent, chemical bile; chicken soup has been lauded as a cold remedy since the time of the ancient Greeks. More recently, the 12th century Jewish physician Maimonides also gave bouillon the thumbs up in his book, "On the Cause of Symptoms" in which he recommends "the broth of hens and other fowl to neutralise body constitution." 

"Feed a cold and starve a fever" is a notion that dates back at least to the Middle Ages, when it was believed that maladies induced by cooler temperatures needed to be "fuelled" with fodder, and those brought on by heat were treated by starving the body of energy. While most modern doctors would scoff heartily at these simplistic ideas, a Dutch research team conducted studies back in 2002 which found some indirect evidence in support of the theory.

While their findings are intriguing, the official advice is to eat normally and healthily, drink plenty of fluid and get lots of rest. This, however, doesn't stop Britons from spending over £500m annually on cold, cough and sore throat "remedies", none of which will actually cure a cold, but exist to make us feel a little bit better. So what else do people believe might help coax those sinuses into throbbing at a lazier tempo?

For some it's the rosy amelioration of cream of tomato soup, for others we're talking a fierce dish of peppery rasam or the silken sludge of congee. There are endless global variations on the "dream team" of garlic, ginger, onions, lemons, honey and of course the soothing liquid bullion of chicken soup. There is now a juggernaut of evidence indicating that vitamin C does little to prevent or treat a cold, but for centuries Ecuadorian Indians have feasted on acerola cherries as a preventative measure, while the Seminole Indians gargle with grapefruit juice. For New Zealanders, a healthy dollop of manuka honey stirred into freshly squeezed orange juice works wonders and in South Africa the practice of eating whole, raw lemons, pith, pips and all is deemed to be an effective, if somewhat mouth-puckering cure.

I have Japanese friends who swear by the powers of tamagozake, a rousing cocktail of sake, sugar and raw egg, or okayu, rice porridge studded with spring onions and tart umeboshi plums. My Iranian mate Omid seeks solace in bowls of ash-e anar, a delicious sounding pomegranate soup, while his granddad was a firm believer in the restorative properties of boiled, salted turnips. In Mongolia, the first sneeze is greeted with a mixture of grated garlic, yak's ghee and hot milk; for Russians only gogol mogol, a soporific cocktail of hot buttered milk, egg yolk and sugar will cut the mustard, or indeed, the custard.

For Bangladeshis, Vietnamese, Thais and many other Asians, it has to be congee: the sicker the patient, the simpler the recipe. In Laos, at the peak of a cold, just the rudiments of water and rice are slowly simmered to a creamy porridge. As health's bloom gingerly returns, the water is replaced with chicken stock and pepped up with coriander, dried pork, chicken slices, crispy onions, a generous squeeze of lime and lashings of jeow (red pepper flakes, lime, soy and fish sauce). 

Of course, one person's tin of Heinz is very much another's samgyetang (Korean ginseng chicken soup, since you ask), but whatever your culinary weapon of choice, when it comes to taming the beast of a cold, nothing beats the steamy tendrils unfurling from a nice hot cuppa. For a cup of tea it seems, really does solve everything.

Koreans are partial to a citrus-laced brew of yuja (yuzu), and for Filipinos and Cubans a hot mug of oregano tea is the antidote. A potent bevvy of ginger and spring onion helps the Chinese sweat out a fever, while in Hawaii they drink an infusion of uhaloa, a flowering mallow, and in Greece it's fennel. In fact every culture seems to boast its own health-giving tisane.

There's cold comfort in knowing that ultimately of course, no real cure for the common cold exists, and to some extent we just have to allow nature to run its mucilaginous course. However, the absence of a cure doesn't stop us from wanting to treat the symptoms. So what do you turn to when struck down? Do you reach for that classic scarlet and black tin can or are you all about more exotic, homespun fare?