HERBS
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 pharmacopœia. 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.”
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
○ Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in
bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).
○ Chemical formulæ are written with a notation that indicates some
numbers are subscripts. For example: in H_{2}O the _{2} part means
the ‘2’ is a subscript.
End of Project Gutenberg's Spices and How to Know Them, by W. M. Gibbs