The Book of Herbs by Rosalind Northcote (christmas read aloud txt) 📕
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In Elizabethan days, Caraway Seeds were appreciated at dessert, and Canon Ellacombe says that the custom of serving roast apples with a little saucerful of Caraway Seed is still kept up at some of the London livery dinners. It was the practice to put them among baked fruits or into bread-cakes, and they were also “made into comfits.” In cakes and comfits they are used to-day, and in Germany I have seen them served with potatoes fried in slices. The roots were boiled and “eaten as carrots,” and made a “very welcome and delightful dish to a great many,” though some found them rather strong flavoured. “The[17] Duchemen call it Mat kumell or Wishenkumel and the Freses, Hofcumine. It groweth in great plentye in Freseland in the meadows there betweene Marienhoffe and Werden, hard by the sea banke.”
[17] “Turner’s Herbal,” 1538.
Celery (Apium graveolens).This is quite without romance. The older herbalists did not know it and Evelyn says: “Sellery... was formerly a stranger with us (nor very long since in Italy itself).... Nor is it a distinct species of smallage or Macedonian Parsley, tho’ somewhat more hot and generous, by its frequent transplanting, and thereby render’d sweeter scented.” For its “high and grateful taste, it is ever plac’d in the middle of the grand sallet, at our great men’s tables, and Proctor’s Feasts, as the grace of the whole board.” But though Parkinson did not know the plant under this name, he did see some of the first introduced into England, and gives an interesting account of this introduction to “sweete Parsley or sweet Smallage.... This resembles sweete Fennell.... The first that ever I saw was in a Venetian Ambassador’s garden in the spittle yard, near Bishop’s Gate Streete. The first year it is planted with us it is sweete and pleasant, especially while it is young, but after it has grown high and large hath a stronger taste of smallage, and so likewise much more the following yeare. The Venetians used to prepare it for meate many waies, both the herbe and roote eaten rawe, or boyled or fryed to be eaten with meate, or the dry’d herb poudered and strewn upon meate; but most usually either whited and so eaten raw with pepper and oyle as a dainty sallet of itselfe, or a little boyled or stewed... the taste of the herbe being a little warming, but the seede much more.”
Chervil (Scandix Cerefolium).Piers Plowman.
Chervil was much used by the French and Dutch “boyled or stewed in a pipkin. De la Quintinye recommends it to give a ‘perfuming rellish’ to the salad, and Evelyn says the ‘Sweete (and as the French call it Musque) Spanish Chervile,’ is the best and ought ‘never to be wanting in our sallets,’ for it is ‘exceeding wholesome and charming to the spirits.’... This (as likewise Spinach) is used in tarts and serves alone for divers sauces.”
Ciboules, Chiboules or Chibbals (Allium Ascalonium).The Gipsies Metamorphosed.—Ben Jonson.
Ciboules are a small kind of onion; De la Quintinye says, “Onions degenerated.” From the reference to them in Piers Plowman, they were evidently in common use here in the time of Langlande. The French gardener adds that they are “propagated only by seeds of the bignes of a corn of ordinary gun-powder,” and Mr Britten identifies them with Scallions or Shallot (A. ascalonium).
Cives, or Chives, or Seives (Allium Schænoprasum).A case of small musicians, with a din
Of little Hautbois, whereon each one strives
To show his skill; they all were made of seives,
Excepting one, which puff’d the player’s face,
And was a Chibole, serving for the bass.
Britannia’s Pastorals, Book III.
Cives and Ciboules are often mentioned together, as in this account of King Oberon’s feast. The leaves are green and hollow and look like rushes en miniature, and would serve admirably for elfin Hautbois. Miss Amherst[18] says that they are mentioned in a list of herbs (Sloane MS., 1201) found “at the beginning of a book of cookery recipes, fifteenth century.” She also tells us that when Kalm came to England (May 1748) he noticed them among the vegetables most grown in the nursery-gardens round London. They were “esteemed milder than onions,” and of a “quick rellish,” but their fame has declined in the last hundred years. Loudon says that the leaves are occasionally used to flavour soup, salads and omelettes—unlike ciboules, the bulb is not used—but the chief purpose for which I have heard them required is to mix with the food for young guinea-fowls and chickens.
[18] “History of Gardening in England.”
Coriander (Coriandrum sativum).That hangs on slightest threads her trembling seeds.
The Salad.—Cowper.
The chief interest attached to Coriander is that in the Book of Numbers, xi. 7, Manna is compared to the seed. It was originally introduced from the East, but is now naturalised in Essex and other places, where it has long been cultivated for druggists and confectioners. The seeds are quite round, like tiny balls, and Hogg remarks that they become fragrant by drying, and the longer they are kept the more fragrant they become. “If taken oute of measure it doth trouble a manne’s witt, with great jeopardye of madnes.”[19] Nowadays one comes across them oftenest in little round pink and white comfits for children.
[19] Turner.
Cumin (Cuminum cyminum).The roses reigning the pride of May,
Sharp isope good for greene woundes remedies.[20]
Cumin is also mentioned in the Bible by Isaiah; and also in the New Testament, as one of the plants that were tithed. It is very seldom met with, but the seeds have the same properties as caraway seeds. Gerarde says it has “little jagged leaves, very finely cut into small parcels,” and “spoky tufts” of red or purplish flowers. “The root is slender, which perisheth when it hath ripened his seed,” and it delights in a hot soil. He recommends it to be boyled together with wine and barley meale “to the forme of a pultis” for a variety of ailments. In Germany the seeds are put into bread and they figure in folklore. De Gubernatis says it gave rise to a saying among the Greeks: “Le cumin symbolisait, chez les Grecs, ce qui est petit. Des avares, ils disaient, qu’ils auraient même partagé le cumin.”
[20] Muiopotmos.—Spenser.
Cresses.Adown the crystal dykes of Camelot,
Come slipping o’er their shadows on the sand....
Betwixt the cressy islets, white in flower.
Geraint and Enid.
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves.
Ode to Memory.—Tennyson.
Than Leda’s love and cresses from the rill.
Endymion.
Ibid.
I loiter round my cresses.
The Brook.—Tennyson.
Cresses have great powers of fascination for the poets, and “the cress of the Herbalist is a noun of multitude,” says Dr Fernie. Of these now cultivated, St Barbara’s Cress (Barbarea vulgaris) has the most picturesque name, and is the least known. It was once grown for a winter salad, but American Cress (Erysimum præcox) is more recommended for winter and early spring. Indian Cress (Tropæolum majus), usually known as nasturtium, is seldom counted a herb, although it is included in some old gardening lists, for the sake of the pickle into which its unripe fruits were made. Abercrombie adds that the flowers and young leaves are used in salads, but this must be most rare in England; though, when once in Brittany, I remember that the bonne used to ornament the salad on Sundays with an artistic decoration of scarlet and striped nasturtium flowers. Garden Cress (Lepidium sativum), the tiny kind, associated in one’s mind since nursery days with “mustard,” used to be known as Passerage, as it was believed to drive away madness. Dr Fernie continues, that the Greeks loved cress, and had a proverb, “Eat Cresses and get wit.” They were much prized by our poor people, when pepper was a luxury. “The Dutchmen[21] and others used to eate Cresses familiarly with their butter and breade, as also stewed or boyled, either alone or with other herbs, whereof they make a Hotch-Potch. We doe eate it mixed with Lettuce and Purslane, or sometimes with Tarragon or Rocket with oyle, vinegar, and a little salt, and in that manner it is very savoury.”
Water-Cress (Nasturtium officinale) is rich in mineral salts and is valuable as food. The leaves remain “green when grown in the shade, but become of a purple brown because of their iron, when exposed to the sun,” says Dr Fernie. “It forms the chief ingredient of the Sirop Antiscorbutique, given so successfully by the French faculty.” “Water-Cress pottage” is a good remedy “to help head aches. Those that would live in health may use it if they please, if they will not I cannot help it.” This is Culpepper’s advice, but he relents even to those too weak-minded to avail themselves of a cure, salutary but unpalatable. “If they fancy not pottage they may eat the herb as a sallet.”
[21] Parkinson.
Dandelion (Leontodon taraxacum).The schoolboy’s clock in every town,
Which the truant puffs amain,
To conjure lost hours back again.
William Howitt.
Dandelion leaves used to be boiled with lentils, and one recipe bids one have them “chopped as pot-herbes, with a few Allisanders boyled in their broth.” But generally they were regarded as a medicinal, rather than a salad plant. Evelyn, however, includes them in his list, and says they should be “macerated in several waters, to extract the Bitterness. It was with this Homely Fare the Good Wife Hecate entertain’d Theseus.” A better way of “extracting the Bitterness” is to blanch the leaves, and it has been advised to dig up plants from the road-sides in winter when salad is scarce, and force them in pots like succory. He continues that of late years “they have been sold in most Herb Shops about London for being a wonderful Purifier of the Blood.” Culpepper, whose fiery frankness it is impossible to resist quoting, manages on this subject to get his knife into the doctors, as, to do him justice, he seldom loses an opportunity of doing. “You see what virtues this common herb hath, and this is the reason the French and Dutch so often eate them in the spring, and now, if you look a little further, you may see plainly, without a pair of spectacles, that foreign physicians are not so selfish as ours are, but more communicative of the virtues of plants to people.” The Irish used to call it Heart-Fever-Grass. The root, when roasted and ground, has been substituted for coffee, and gave satisfaction to some of those who drank it. Hogg relates a tale of woe from the island of Minorca, how that once locusts devoured the harvest there, and the inhabitants were forced to, and did
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