CHAPTER XV HERBS

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NEARLY every one is familiar with the subject of this chapter. The sweet and aromatic herbs for culinary purposes are found in both hemispheres, and little, therefore, need be said about them. Of those who know them, none are better acquainted or more familiar with their use than the farmer’s wife. The herbs we are to consider are the few having that peculiar property of imparting to fresh meats a flavor, so much esteemed, which brings them into general use. They are also used for medicinal purposes of which we have the following kinds: Sage, marjoram, savory, parsley, and thyme. “Herbs to still the summer.” “The knowledge of stilling is one of pretty feat,” but it is a lost art. The stilling room was also a drying room, and in breezy shadows throughout the long summer days were drying leaves and sprigs of many aromatic plants. The branches were often made up into small bunches, the size to be used for a kettle of soup or for the basting of a single roast. “These were the fagots of herbs so often ordered in old recipes, and were a not unimportant part of household supplies. There is no spice comparable for herbs use in rosemary.” Pliny says that the serpents sought the shade of the fennel to strengthen their sight. Culpepper noted the starry influence under which each plant grew.

SAGE

Sage (Salvia officinalis) is the common sage. Sage, sauge, swage, natural order Laminaceoe.

French, Sauge; Portuguese, Salva; Italian and Latin, Salvia, Salvas (Culpepper). It is governed by Mars. Salvia, from salvo, to save or heal. The most extensively used of the herbs is the sage. Its high reputation as a medicine lasted for years. The Arabians valued it, and the medical school of Salerno summed up its surpassing merits in the line, “Cur morietor homo cui salvia cresit in horto?” (How can a man die who grows sage in his garden?) Perhaps this originated the English saying, “Who eats sage in May shall live for aye.” Parkinson says: “It maketh the hayre blacke, it is good for woundis. For lethargy and forgetfulness bathe the back of the head with a decoction of sage and smallage.” Pepys notes that in churchyards between Gasport and Southampton, England, the custom prevailed of sowing the graves with sage. Evelyn sums up its noble properties by its assiduous use as making man immortal. “We cannot, therefore, but allow the tender summities of the young leaves but principally the flowers in our sallet.”

Salvia officinalis and S. grandiflora. The first is the common garden sage, a native of southern Europe, and has been naturalized for many years in this country as a garden plant. It is a perennial shrub, seldom more than two feet high and sometimes treated as an annual. The plant has a pubescent four-sided stem with erect branches, hoary with down, and leafy at the base, those bearing flowers being about a foot or a foot and a half long. The flowers are in racemes of blue variegated with purple (rarely red), arranged in spiked whorls. The flowers have but two perfect stamens, the filaments of which bear at their summit a cross thread. A much-elongated connective is fastened by a point and has one cell of the anther at the upper end and the other, but imperfect, cell at the other end. The seeds of many species, when steeped in water, become covered with a mucilaginous slime, like that of quince seeds. The leaves are ovate, oblong, lanceolate, finely notched, are curiously wrinkled or rough, hairy or tomentose, and of a whitish-green color. The leaves and tops are gathered and dried during the flowering seasons, which is in June and July. Sage is slightly tonic with a peculiar, strong, astringent, aromatic, camphorous odor, and a sharp, warm, slightly bitter taste. These properties are owing to its volatile oil (sage oil), which may be obtained by distilling the plant with water infusion, but more especially in alcohol. Formerly it had a high reputation as a sudorific and as an antiseptic, and was so esteemed by the ancients, especially by the Chinese, but at present, though officinal, it is little used as a remedy except in domestic practice, and it has no place in the pharmacopoeia. But the infusion is much valued in cases of gastric debility as a gargle, checking flatulency with speed and certainty. It is a good astringent and nerve tonic as well as a good remedy for use in cases of rheumatism. But its great use is as a condiment in flavoring dress, sausage, cheese, etc. Sage grows best in dry soil and is found growing on sunny mountain slopes and rocks. It has long been in general cultivation in gardens, and it is easily raised from the seed or from cuttings or divisions of the root. Roots should be planted about six inches apart. Sage brush (Carteunissia hidenlata) is found on Western table lands. The apple-bearing sage (S. pomifera) is a native of Southern Europe and is remarkable for its reddish or purple bracts and large gall nuts growing on the branches as on the leaves of the oak. These are known as sage apples. They have an agreeable aromatic taste and are edible. Both these species are used to adulterate.

MARJORAM
1 Leaf and flower stem
2 Bract of flower
3, 4 Different views of flower
5 Stamens
6 Seed

The Salvia longiflora of Peru sometimes attains the height of twenty feet, with flowers six to eight inches long. Several kinds are found fifteen feet in height. There are said to be nearly 300 varieties of sage, among which are the following: S. splenden, with large spiked, scarlet flowers, from Mexico, which is esteemed by florists; S. coccinea, with smaller, but handsome flowers; the open-corolled S. patens, with tall, open spikes, with large blue flowers; the bracteated S. involucrata, with thick obtuse spikes of reddish-purple flowers; the Clory S. sclarea, with large, beautiful, purplish-green deciduous bracts.

MARJORAM

Marjoram (Origanum marjorum). Origanum (meaning in Greek, joy of the mountains).

Sweet marjoram, a genus of the natural order of plants labiatÆ or mint family. It is chiefly a native of Greece and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. It is an annual shrubby plant with a stem about one foot high, and has a ten-ribbed, five-toothed calyx, loose spikes, and broad bracts. It is peculiarly aromatic and fragrant, and is much used, as other mint plants are used, in common cooking. It has nearly an entire ovate, or egg-shaped, grayish or green, leaf, covered on both sides with a thin down, situated about three roundish heads of small purplish flowers crowded in cylindrical or oblong spikes, which are imbricated with colored bracts. It flowers in August. The flowers are very small and inconspicuous. Marjoram contains a yellowish essential oil (oil of marjoram or oil of origanum), which is obtained from some species by distillation. It yields fifteen ounces from one hundred and fifty pounds of the recent-cut plants. This oil will become solid by standing. It is used for toothache and for cancers. An infusion of it is a stimulant and is a good remedy for nervousness. It is mixed with olive oil to make a stimulating liniment, which is used as a remedy for rheumatic complaints and for baldness, and in case of sprains and bruises. The common marjoram, wild (O. vulgare, is found on dry hilly, bushy places.

PARSLEY
1 Ripening fruit
2 Ripening fruit, more developed
3 Flower
4 Stamen
5 Pistil
6 Seed

PARSLEY

Parsley (Carum petroselinum sativum). French, Persil (Culpepper). It is governed by Venus.

Parsley is a biennial plant, with a fleshy, spindle-shaped root and a rough, erect, smooth-branching stem. It is a native of the Eastern Mediterranean region. It is now widely cultivated in all parts of the civilized world as a culinary vegetable, and it sometimes runs wild, the root being one of the principal parts. It is a great favorite on account of its much-divided, finely cut, crisped, aromatic leaves, which are used in flavoring soups and other dishes and for garnishing. The leaves of the wild parsley are plain. Parsley has a white or greenish-yellow flower and from the seed an essential oil is obtained, named apial, which is used as a drug in place of quinine in intermittent fevers. Its leaves are often chewed to neutralize the scent of onions. Parsley wreaths were twined for the victors of the Nemean games, but now it has fallen from its high estate to flavor or to garnish some lordly dish. The seed was formerly mixed in cheese curds with fennel and thyme and other fragrant herbs. The roots were also used as a relish, as noted in the words of Wynkyn, “de worde in the Boke of Keriynge says ‘Åquinces and peres Ciryppe with parcelery rate. Bight to begyn your mele.’” Parsley seeds germinate imperfectly and the disappointment of the sower was explained by the belief that the devil took his tithe thereof. Many dire evils, belief in which can scarcely now be understood, were attached to the sowing, gathering, and even dreaming of parsley seed. These beliefs may have originated in the fact that the Greeks strewed it upon newly made graves. To be in need of parsley was a colloquialism which expressed the imminence of death. Herrick said: “Dear Perenna, Prithee come and with Smallage dressmy tomb.”

SAVORY
1 Flower
2 Flower without stamens
3 Leaf
4 Flower cut, showing stamens
5 Corolla
6 Leaves of an axil
7 Pistil
8 Stamen
9 Seed

SAVORY

Satureia Hortensis, a genus of the natural order labiatÆ, belonging to the mint family.

French, Savorae.

It is said to be governed by Mercury (Culpepper) and was supposed to belong to the satyrs. The summer savory is chiefly of two kinds—S. Hortensis, the summer savory, and S. Montana, the winter savory. Both kinds are natives of Southern Europe. Savory is mentioned in the Old Testament (Genesis, Chap. XXVII, 4th verse): “And make me savoury meet such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless thee before I die.” Savory was probably introduced into Britain by the Romans, as we find it spoken of in a Latin treatise, “Husbandrie of Pallodius,” at the fifteenth century, translated about 1420. It is a common herbaceous plant, from ten inches to one foot high, being half shrubby, with numerous stalks, which are very hard and woody near the bottom. The leaves are narrow, oblong or linear or lanceolate, entire, acute at the end, with resinous dots and short axillary, standing two at each joint, with a quantity of young ones in their axils. The flowers, which grow on the upper part of the stalk among the leaves, are white with a tinge of blue or red. The whole plant of the common summer savory (S. Hortensis), as our cultivated garden herb is known, has an agreeable pungent taste and aromatic odor, and is analogous to those of thyme (thymus), differing from it in the regular five-toothed or fine-cleft calyx and having the stamens bent together into an arch under the upper lip of the corolla, both being in common use as a seasoning in cooking, either fresh or dried, for flavoring dishes, and especially for flavoring beans, and is cultivated for these culinary purposes in Europe and America. Its tea is used as a remedy for colic and as a cathartic. Winter savory (S. Montana) is used in the same way as the summer savory.

THYME
1 Plant
2 Root
3 Leaf
4, 5 Stamens
6 Fruit
7 Seed
8 Stamen
9 Seed

THYME

Garden thyme (Thymus vulgaris).

French, Thym; German, Thyman.

Thyme teucrium marum and Thyme pallium. It is a plant of the genus thymus, a humble, half-shrubby plant of the natural order labiatÆ (mint family); Latin, thymus incense, thus indicating its former use on sacrificial altars. It is said to have made the bed in the stable at Bethlehem and was used in many charms and incantations. “It is ever the bee’s alluring time,” and it was wild thyme which gave the famed flavor to the honey of Mount Hymettus. Among the Greeks thyme denoted graceful elegance of the Attic style. To smell of thyme was an expression of praise applied to those whose style was admirable. In the days of chivalry, peradventure, very highly noted ladies used to embroider their knightly heroes’ scarfs with the figure of a bee hovering about a sprig of thyme, the bees as the belles of thyme. Early lists of English plants give no name with which it can certainly be identified. It grows from six inches to one foot high and has a two-lipped calyx and four diverging stamens and is clothed with a hoary down, with narrow, almost elliptical leaves with edges turned in. It may have many stems slightly indented in pairs, standing erect upon short petioles or decumbent at the base, which bear very small ovate leaves, which are sharp-pointed, while those of the whorls are blunt. The flowers are of a pale purple or whitish or reddish color, which grow in separate whorls, six in a whorl. It flowers from May until August and is a native of Europe and especially of Southern France. It is commonly found growing on dry hills and is cultivated in gardens on account of its fragrance. It has a pungent, aromatic property and is largely used as a seasoning for soups, sauces, etc. From it is also distilled the oil of thyme, which is considerably used in veterinary practice and for perfumery, and often passes as oil of organum. The tea of thyme is also used for nervous habits. The wild creeping thyme, or mother of thyme, is T. serpillum, a less erect plant which has a procumbent stem with many branches from two to three feet long, small entire oval leaves and purplish flowers, arranged in whorls, which are united in a dense terminal leafy head. This variety is abundant on hills and mountains in Great Britain and in all parts of Europe and the north of Asia, between forty and fifty varieties being described. It is less fragrant than garden thyme, but both species have the same aromatic essential oil.

T. serpillum has procumbent stems, numerous short ascending branches, ending in short, loose, leafy, whorled flower spikes, the leaves being egg-shaped and narrow and more or less fringed toward the bottom, those of the flower spikes being similar but smaller. There are two forms—T. en serpillum, with flowering branches, ascending from shoots, which are barren at the tip in one head, and the upper lip of the corolla oblong; and T. chamoedrys, in which all the branches ascend from the crown of the root stalk with whorls in many axillary heads and a short and broad upper lip to the corolla. The flowering branches, herba thymi and herba serpylli, are used in medicine as a powerful stimulant.

The lemon thyme, or lemon-scented thyme of our gardens, is regarded as a variety of thyme serpyllum known as citratus or citriodrus, which is generally a hardy and very dwarfed traveling evergreen, of lower growth than the common garden thyme. No species of thyme is indigenous in America. Seed should be sown in drills or broadcast in March or April, in light, fine earth and raked in lightly. The young plants are transplanted in the summer when from two to three inches high. After they are from three to five inches in growth, they should be thinned out to about ten inches apart. Thyme is also propagated by slips of the branching shoots in the spring or early autumn, but more especially by sections of the brush or by removing rooted branches.

The harvesting takes place in August by cutting the plants rather closely down with a very sharp sickle. The seed should be dried on cloth, rubbed out clean, and preserved in a dry place for sowing the following year. In using the herb for distillation it should not be dried, but the crop gathered each day should be put in the still at once.

SEED

In addition to the seed before mentioned which are used in connection with spices are the caraway, or carum carui.

Coriander or the dried fruit of the Cariandrum salivum, and the cardamom or the dried capsules of Elettaria cardamomum.

CARAWAY

Caraway (Carum carui).

The common name, caraway or carraway, is given to the dried fruits carum carui, which is a biennial umbelliferous plant. The English name caraway and the Spanish name alcarahuega are derived from the name given to the fruit by the Arabians, “karawya.” It is a native of Great Britain, growing on very low ground with a root much like the parsnip. The seeds are sown in drills in the autumn soon after they are ripe, and must be thinned out the same as carrots and other similar plants, and must be kept free from weeds. They will flower in June and are ready for harvesting in July. The plant grows two or three feet high. The leaves are long and subdivided into numerous pinnulÆ or segments which are narrow-pointed and of a dark color. The flowers grow in terminal umbels. The seeds are two, naked, brown, striated, and of an oblong shape, hot and acrid but pleasant to the taste. The seed abounds in essential oil containing gummy and resinous parts. Its tincture is used as a stomachic and carminative. It is used as a flavoring in cooking.

CORIANDER

(Kariandrum.) The product known as coriander seed consists of the dried ripe fruit of cariandrum salivum, which is the only specie of the genus umbelliferÆ. It is an annual herb cultivated in France and Germany for its seed. It grows about two feet high with branching stems. The stalks are round and erect and hollow, but have a pith within. The leaves are bipinnate, the lower ones divided into broad or wedge-shaped, deeply cut segments, while the upper ones are divided into narrow parts and more finely cut. The flowers grow in clusters of a white or reddish color upon its branches. The umbels have five to eight rays without a general involucre and the partial ones consists of a few small bracts. The seeds follow, two after each flower. They are half round and are the only part of the plant used. The most characteristic feature is this globular fruit, which is of a chamois or pale-yellow color and is about the size of the white pepper corn, which is crowned by the teeth of the calyx and contains no oil channels on the outer surface, but has two on the inner face of each half of the fruit. The ridges are five in number and very indistinct. As the two carpels, of which the fruit is composed, do not readily separate one from the other, they being protected by the ligneous pericarp, the fruit must be broken before submitting them to distillation. The unripe fruit possesses the intensely disgusting odors of the other parts of the plant, and for that reason it should be allowed to ripen fully before gathering. When they are dry they are sweet and fragrant. They dispel wind and warm and strengthen the stomach, and assist in digestion, and are good for pains in the head. They are also used in whole mixed spices, used for pickling.

CARDAMOM

Cardamom, Kardamom (Amomum cardamomum).

Cardamom is the fruit of various East India or Chinese plants of the genera elettari of the ginger family (Zingiberaceoe). Especially the most esteemed are those contained in the dried capsules, E. cardamomum of Malabar, which differs from the genus amomum by its elongated filiform tube of the corolla, by the presence of internal lateral lobes in the shape of very small tooth-like processes and by the filaments not being prolonged beyond the anther. All the species are natives of the tropical parts of India. Small or Malabar cardamoms, as they are known commercially, are the rhizomes which are thick, fleshy, or woody and ridged with scars of the attachments of previous leaves, giving off fibrous roots below. Stems, perennial, erect, smooth, jointed, enveloped in the spongy sheaths of the leaves, from six to nine feet high and about one inch thick, round and green and hollow, but with pith within, and resemble our reeds in many respects. The leaves are a half yard long, alternate, sessile in their sheath, entire lanceolate, fine-pointed, pubescent above, silky beneath, sheaths slightly villous with a roundish ligule rising from the mouth, and as broad as a man’s hand. Besides these stalks, there rises from the same root others which are weak and tender and about eight inches high, which produce the flowers, which are small and greenish. Following every flower comes one of the fruits called the great cardamom, which is a light, dry, hollow fruit of a whitish color, and somewhat triangular in shape, and of the size of a small bean, and of a dry substance on the outside, but with several small seeds within, which are reddish in color and very acrid but pleasant to the taste. These fruits are called the lesser cardamoms or cardamom seeds, and they are excellent to strengthen the stomach and to assist digestion. They also are good for disorders of the head and are equal to anything to be had for colics, and are best used by chewing. They are used in whole mixed spices. There are two other kinds of cardamoms known as the middle cardamom, a long fruit, seldom met with, and the great cardamom, generally called “Grain of Paradise.”

In the home market three kinds of cardamoms are found under the curious names of “shorts,” “short-longs,” and “long-longs.” Shorts are capsules from a quarter to half an inch long and a quarter of an inch broad, and the longest of the long-longs is about one inch in length.


  • Transcriber’s Notes:
    • Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
    • In several places the punctuation of numbers were undecided in meaning. They were changed to have the most-likely meaning. (Pages 57 - “1 4-10”, 116 - “133 1-3”).
    • On page 74, the table “Chemical composition of Capsicum annum” was reformatted so that “Seed”, “Pod” and “Whole Fruit” were column headings.
    • In the illustration facing page 24, the caption “Fig. 23. MAIZE STARCH” was corrected to “Fig. 25. MAIZE STARCH”.
    • On page 158, the reference to “rough, hairy seed (Fig. 5)” was corrected to “(Fig. 4)”.
    • In the illustration facing page 80, the caption “5 Sargon” was corrected to “5 Saigon”.
    • Typographical errors were silently corrected.
    • Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.





                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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