Herbs

A Global History
Gary Allen

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 Herbs
A Global History

Gary Allen

 
 For J. V. Allen (‒)

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd

 Great Sutton Street
London  , 
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 

Copyright © Gary Allen 

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.

Printed and bound in China by C&C Offset Printing Co., Ltd

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Allen, Gary
Herbs : a global history. – (Edible)
. Herbs. . Cooking (Herbs) – History.
. Cooking (Herbs)
. Title . Series
.-

     

 Contents

Introduction 
1 What, Exactly, Are Herbs? 
2 The Usual Suspects 
3 A Less Eurocentric Herbarium 
4 The Sisterhood of the Travelling Plants 
5 The Herbal Melting Pot 

Recipes 
References 
Bibliography 
Websites and Associations 
Acknowledgements 
Photo Acknowledgements 
Index 
 Introduction

Long before humans began to cultivate their own crops, they

hunted and foraged for food. Eventually they found that
they could produce larger quantities of grains and vegetables
through farming, but the plants that made their meals more
interesting still grew wild in the rocky places that were unsuit-
able to cereal agriculture. The plants that we call ‘herbs’ con-
tinued to be hunted in the wild – indeed, in many parts of the
world they still are.
Early farmers learned that, for their fields to remain fertile,
they needed periodic rests – or fallow periods. The ancient
Hebrews even made this part of their laws. Leviticus :–
and – specify that every seventh year the fields could not
be planted. During that year, people tended to revert to a kind
of hunter-gatherer existence, during which wild plants were
especially esteemed. The Talmud even helped by distinguish-
ing between wild and domesticated versions of the same
plants, giving distinctive names to the wild versions (which
included rocket (arugula), celery, chicory, coriander (cilantro),
mustard, purslane and rue).
Gradually, many of these savoury weeds began to be
planted in small household gardens, usually within easy reach
of the person who did the cooking.


 [Some] years ago, an archaeologist noticed some Rosemary
growing in an oddly regular fashion. Digging – feet
below the surface, he discovered the ruins of a small house.
Some ancient Roman had planted the Rosemary conve-
niently close to the kitchen door. Long after the occupants
had passed on to their culinary rewards, and their house
crumbled, the Rosemary lived on. Century after century,
the soil built up over the spot, rising slowly enough for the
Rosemary to keep its head above the horizon.

Some small kitchen gardens eventually evolved into

formal herb gardens. It is no accident that herbs, those glori-
fied weeds, are grown in the only food gardens that are
designed for their aesthetic properties. While all other crops
are grown for efficiency of production, these lowly weeds
have a place of honour, close to our homes and hearts. Herb
gardens are intended to appeal to all of our senses, to en-
courage us to linger in their intimate, civilized wildness.
Sometimes these ‘weeds’ can be found thriving in pots on our
kitchen windowsills.
Herbs have been with us since before we were modern
humans. They have evolved with us – like cats and dogs –
and, just as our pets have become family members, we like to
pamper them and keep them close because these plants
retain just enough of their original wildness to endlessly
fascinate us.


 1
What, Exactly, Are Herbs?

It’s a frequently asked question. It would be wonderful to have

a simple and straightforward answer but, unfortunately, no
such answer exists. Part of the problem is that the word ‘herb’
means different things to different people.
‘Spice’ means nothing at all to botanists, and when they
think of herbs they mean non-woody vascular plants that
die, or at least waste away, after flowering. Most cooks, and
many gardeners, would find that definition essentially useless.
For one thing, they’ve noticed that some ‘herbs’ can with age
become woody – which means the stems are tough enough
to survive frost without melting away as annuals do, and are
similar to the twigs of a tree – and don’t actually ‘waste away’
(for example: rosemary, sage and thyme).
Cooks often distinguish herbs from spices by the part
of the plant used in cooking: ‘herbs’ are foliage or flowers,
while ‘spices’ consist of bark, seeds and roots. In practice,
at least in the European tradition, ‘herbs’ are parts of plants
that are grown in domestic gardens, while spices are almost
always imported – usually from tropical parts of the globe.
Unfortunately, no matter which set of rules one chooses,
it is bound to have so many exceptions that its usefulness
is questionable.

 For example, mustard (Brassica and Sinapis spp.) and
coriander (Coriandrum sativum) seeds are treated like spices but
they thrive in temperate gardens, and both produce foliage
that is used more like the ingredients we call ‘herbs’. Young
mustard leaves are eaten as a salad herb, while older leaves are
cooked slowly, as pot-herbs. Coriander leaves, cilantro, are
used sparingly as a fresh herb in many cuisines (indeed, in
Thai kitchens the leaves, stems and roots are considered to
be different ingredients, and have distinct names). In some
places, like Vietnam, coriander is used by the handful – it’s
practically a vegetable.
We also use several different terms to categorize the plants,
and parts thereof, we use in our kitchens. We have already seen
salad herbs and pot-herbs, but there are also herbal teas (in-
fusions that are better described as tisanes). Some of these

Assorted herbs (basil, Italian flat-leaf parsley, sage, tarragon and thyme)
from the author’s garden.


Coriander, or cilantro (Coriandrum sativum). The newest (more finely
dissected) leaves at the top of each sprig indicate that the plant is
about to go to seed.
plants and plant parts serve primarily as ‘seasoning’, while
others do not. This is not a problem for English speakers only.
In Germany, ‘kraut’ refers to any ingredient based on leafy
plant matter; ‘sauerkraut’ is probably familiar to everyone, but
‘bohnenkraut’ may not be – the word means ‘bean herb’ and
it’s used for both summer and winter savory (Satureja spp.).
Chinese cooks are heavily dependent upon a number of fer-
mented ingredients to add flavour to their dishes, but use only
a couple of spices, and perhaps three herbs, as seasoning.
However, their cooking features a large variety of leafy greens
we would consider to be pot-herbs. The Vietnamese, as noted
above, use leafy plants we would describe as ‘culinary herbs’
in such large quantities that they seem like salad greens –
rather intensely flavoured, to be sure, but ‘salad’ nonetheless.
Virtually every reference describes cloves as a ‘spice’, yet
they are the unopened buds of flowers – which, by conven-
tional logic, suggests that they should be listed among the
herbs. While Europeans only know the dried flower buds of
this tropical evergreen tree, an Indonesian might use its leaves,
twigs and bark. The clove tree provides seasoning, food, per-
fume and even cigarettes called kretek, all made with one or
more parts of the tree. The Eurocentric term ‘spice’ seems
wholly inadequate when seen from the perspective of the
Indonesians who harvest it.
What we choose to call ‘herbs’ and ‘spices’ are often little
more than accidents of geography, history and contemporary
modes of transportation. Many of the ingredients we call
‘herbs’ are parts of plants which traditionally have been
grown in European gardens. Before the Age of Exploration
‘spices’ could only be obtained through a series of inter med -
iaries who, for commercial reasons, preferred to keep the
knowledge of their sources proprietary. These sources were
so mysterious to European consumers that many believed

that they grew only in the Garden of Eden. Since cinnamon,
cloves, ginger and pepper could not be grown in Europe’s
temperate climate, they were imported from distant lands, on
the backs of camels that trudged along secret spice routes, or,
later, on very small ships. The spices changed hands many
times along the way (the price rising at every step, an early
example of what we would describe as ‘value added’ today).
The costs imposed by the spice traders and the dangers they
faced along the way forced them to choose only the most
densely flavoured parts of tropical plants. Handling large
amounts of leaves and twigs was simply not cost-effective.
If the discussion of herbs and spices has told us any-
thing, it is that distinguishing between them is troublesome.
While most of us are certain that cinnamon is a spice (it is
the inner bark of a tropical tree, and its flavour and aroma
are intense), the ancient Greeks and Romans had a different
take altogether. They imported vast quantities of leaves they
called phyllon and malabathrum, which came from a tree that is
closely related to the one that gives us cinnamon (malabathrum
is Cinnamomum tamala, while true cinnamon is C. zeylanicum).
These leaves have an even stronger cinnamon quality than
the bark, so perhaps we should be asking ourselves why the
use of these leaves died out. One answer is that it didn’t – it’s
still commonly used in the cooking of South Asia (Bhutan,
India and Nepal).
Simply put, herbs are all those plant parts – other than
spices (given the caveat that the definition of ‘spices’ is less
than clear) – that we use to enhance our food. Traditionally,
Europeans and emigrants from Europe have used the term
‘herbs’ for those plant products – used to add flavour and
scent to their dishes – they could grow for themselves.
‘Spices’ were used the same way, but were always imported,
and hence more expensive. This led to the perception that

spices were somehow more prestigious than herbs – which,
in turn, led to the use of spices in court, or haute, cuisine.
Herbs tended to be seen as common everyday ingredients,
more suitable for ordinary meals.
This difference of approach is arbitrary, based on class
distinction, and has nothing to do with the ingredients them-
selves. In today’s world, the expense of shipping ingredients
from distant shores has been reduced to the point where
economic considerations are irrelevant. While clarifying the
precise divisions between herbs and spices may be difficult,
what is certain is that we value all of these plant parts because
they contain small but intense quantities of alcohols, alde-
hydes, acids, alkaloids, essential oils, esters, ethers, terpenoids
and so on, which add flavour and aroma to our foods. In
today’s kitchens, the only real difference between herbs and
spices is the concentration of the flavouring compounds they
contain. Spices are invariably stronger, and tend to be added
to dishes earlier to extract as much flavour as possible. Herbs,
especially fresh herbs, tend to be added later in cooking, so
that volatile flavours and aromas are not lost before serving.
While we’re discussing the chemicals that give herbs their
distinctive tastes and aromas we should correct a popular
misconception – one that has been repeated in countless
recipe books. We are often told that, in substituting dried
herbs for fresh, we should reduce the amount used to one-
third of the original recommendation. That may be true for
some herbs, but as a guiding principle it has some serious
drawbacks. When herbs dry, they tend to lose some of their
volatile compounds. If they lost them in any sort of consistent
manner, there might be some use to the general rule of sub-
stitution. However, not all herbs are so dependable. Some
herbs become stronger when dried, some do not. Some com-
pounds are altered into different compounds as they dry

(due to fermentation or other chemical processes). Again,
some essential compounds are more volatile than others.
These variables can produce a stronger-flavoured herb, a
weaker one or a totally different one.
For example, fresh tarragon has a lovely anise-like scent
due to the presence of anisol. Unfortunately, when the leaves
lose their water, they also lose much of their anisol – so their
hint of liquorice is greatly diminished. At the same time, a bit
of fermentation causes other compounds in the leaves to
convert to coumarin, which gives dried tarragon the pleasant
– but different – scent of new-mown hay.
When substituting dried herbs for fresh, we must con-
sider not only the amount to be used, but also the fact that
the substitute is actually a different ingredient from that which
was originally specified.
Our ancestors may not have known about the chemical
compounds that gave herbs their appeal, but that didn’t stop
them from believing that these plants had medical or magical
properties. The Doctrine of Signatures was an ancient notion,
now regarded as a superstition, that led people to believe that
the appearance of herbs was somehow connected to their
medical properties: for example, the leaves of hepaticas resem-
bled the liver, so were thought to be beneficial to that organ.
Some herbs actually do have medical properties, but that’s
beyond the scope of this book. For us, the magic that they
add to our tables is more than enough reason to study them,
their origins and their spread around the globe.
One final issue must be addressed. While we put aside our
confusion about what are, or are not, herbs, the names we
have given these plants is another story. Common names for
plants (and birds, fish, animals and so on) are notoriously
troublesome. Many completely different species often share
the same or similar common names. This is not surprising,

Otto Brunfels, ‘Hepatica’ (Hepatica spp.), from Herbarium Vivae Eicones
(), engraving.

since different plants may serve the same culinary function

and be treated as if they were the same species. Sometimes
a new plant, in a new place, simply reminded someone of a
familiar plant in the old country. To try to minimize such
confusions, botanists prefer to use the Latin binomial system
invented by Linnaeus. It may seem pedantic and overly fussy,
but it’s the best method we have to be clear about the plants
we’re discussing. Unfortunately, even the binomial system
has its weaknesses.
Science is an ever-changing field. As scientists learn more
about the connections – and differences – among species,
taxonomists (the people responsible for the naming and cat-
egorizing of species) sometimes have to change the scientific

names given to plants. Since Linnaeus began the process of
systemizing the entire living world, back in the eighteenth
century, a lot of science has changed. Consequently, many of
the useful terms we used to use to categorize plants have been
changed, eliminated, subdivided or recombined with others
and, as a result – especially if one consults older texts (such
as herbals) – the exact identity of the plants that interest us is
occasionally uncertain.
A rational person might suspect that for a system of tax-
onomy to be successful, universality is a key requirement. Such
a person is bound to be disappointed. Successive generations

Round-lobed hepatica (Hepatica americana), a wild native plant in New

York’s Dutchess County.


of scientists have often chosen to change the system, some-
times for very good reasons – but not everyone adopts the
changes. Different authors, in different places, have elected to
incorporate some, all or none of the changes made by others.
As a result, a single species might have several different scien-
tific names. It might be listed in several different genera. It
might even appear in more than one family. All we can do is
try to use the most recent names available, acknowledge the
changes when we can and understand that our best efforts
will probably go awry within a generation or less.


 2
The Usual Suspects

Most herb books focus on a dozen or so species, which just

happen to grow in European herb gardens and consequent-
ly are over-represented in the literature of herbs. In the past,
herbs served many uses outside of the kitchen, so early
herbals tend to feature vast amounts of facts – or imagined
facts – that are of no use to a modern cook or gardener. For
the purposes of this book such impedimenta will be ignored
– unless, of course, they are so charmingly quaint and silly
that we can’t resist including them.

Early Cookbooks
The earliest surviving cookbook (falsely attributed to a first-
century Roman gourmet named Apicius) is De Re Coquinaria.
Obviously, people were cooking, and presumably using
recipes, long before that. A few scraps of recipes have come
down to us from the third century , from a Syracusan
Greek named Mithekos, who was described as ‘the Phidias of
Cooking’ after the most famous sculptor of the ancient
world. In fact, not long ago the French historian Jean Bottéro
went even farther back by translating a few proto-recipes on

Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets that had long been part of
a collection at Yale University. These are recipes for dishes
that are almost recognizable or at least can be imagined on
today’s tables. Mesopotamian pantries were similar to those of
modern Middle Eastern kitchens, minus grapes, olives and of
course anything from the New World. They included familiar
herbs such as rocket (arugula), dill, coriander, cress, fennel,
marjoram, mint, mustard, rosemary, rue, saffron and thyme,
and still-unidentified herbs called sahlu and zurumu.
Clay tablets from Mycenaean Greece – the period some
, years ago described by Homer – mention herbs in use
at the time: celery, coriander, fennel and mint. We don’t know
if they were used as food, medicine or perfume, a confusion
that still exists today.

Early Herbalists
The earliest herbal texts were less concerned with cooking
than with medical usage (which is not surprising, since the
earliest surviving cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, didn’t appear
until the fourth century ).
In the second century  Theophrastus of Athens wrote
his Historia Plantarum, a ten-volume encyclopedia of botany that
included the rough beginnings of taxonomy and an approach
to describing plants based on features that foreshadowed
Linnaeus by some , years. He categorized plants accord-
ing to the form of their roots and leaves, while we tend to use
details of their reproductive organs, flowers, instead. Together,
Aristotle and Theophrastus studied the botany of the Greek
island of Lesbos.
Pliny the Elder compiled his encyclopedia of the natural
world, Natural History, in the first century . Here he assembled

 volumes of notes on what was known (or believed to
be known) about everything that lived, grew or merely
existed in the physical world. The exact date of completion is
unknown but, since he perished while observing the eruption
of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, we know
it had to be before  August,  . His encyclopedia is
divided into  books, with books – devoted to botany
(and subgenres of agriculture, horticulture and pharmacology).
He borrowed directly from Theophrastus, including the
patently ridiculous ideas that basil ‘when old, degenerates into
wild thyme’ or that ‘plants, indeed, will turn of a yellow com-
plexion on the approach of a woman who has the menstrual
discharge upon her’. He also made use of De Re Rustica, an
agricultural treatise by his contemporary, Lucius Junius
Moderatus Columella.
The five volumes of Pedanius Dioscorides’ De Materia
Medica ( ) catalogued over  plants. The first volume dealt
with the properties (including culinary properties) of herbs. He
organized the plants according to their attributes and char-
acteristics, rather than alphabetically, which he felt arbitrarily
destroyed meaningful relationships. This is essentially what
modern botanists do; characteristics define the relationships
between species, and those that share such characteristics are
grouped together within genera, families and so on.
Nonetheless, copyists spent much of the next , years
rearranging the entries, often substituting convenience for
reason. De Materia Medica was the standard text until the late
Middle Ages, in fact until the works of Galen were rediscovered
in the Renaissance. Much of what we know about Egyptian
herbs is based on  Egyptian names for herbs collected in
De Materia Medica. Many of these terms seem to be made up
(and probably were, a century after the death of Dioscorides),
but some appear to name herbs that are still use today (celery,

mith; chicory and endive, agon; coriander, okhion; cress, semeth;
dill, arakhou; elecampane, lenis; fenugreek, itasin; garden orach,
asaraphi; horehound, asterispa; marjoram, sopho; purslane,
mekhmoutim; sage, apousi; and wormwood, somi). Egyptians
recognized at least three different mints: curly mint, Mentha
torgifolia; water mint, M. sativa; and peppermint, M. piperita,
naming them bellou, makitho and tis, respectively. The savory
used by Egyptians was Satureja thymbra (sekemene); their thyme
was Thymus sibthorpii (meroupyos). Dioscorides did not in-
clude an Egyptian name for parsley – he merely listed it as
‘mountain celery’.
‘Apicius’ is a name associated with a great gourmet in
first-century Rome who is alleged to have chosen suicide over
a life in which his finances might not have allowed him to
go on eating in the grandest style. The collection of recipes
that bear his name in De Re Coquinaria were compiled some
 years after any of the possible Apicii flourished (four dif-
ferent people named Apicius are candidates for the honour
of first cookbook author, even though none of them actually
wrote the book). The book features a number of culinary herbs.
Some of them are recognizable today and still in use in modern
kitchens (porrum, leek; ligusticum, lovage; petrosilenium, parsley).
Some are harder to identify (laser, asafoedita; malabathrum,
leaves of a close relative of cinnamon; nardostachyum, spike-
nard) and some incorporate ingredients from plants that are
now extinct (silphium). The last plant, silphium, was so popu-
lar both as a culinary herb and as a contraceptive (though its
effectiveness as the latter was probably wishful thinking) that
the Romans used up the last of them by the beginning of the
first century of the modern era. Pliny, who regarded it as ‘one
of the most precious gifts of Nature to man’, wrote that only
one stalk of silphium of Cyrenaica (now part of the Libyan
coast) had been found in his lifetime.

Apuleius Platonicus, chervil (Chaerophyllum bulbosum), water mint (Mentha
aquatica), alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum), lily (Lilium candidum), spurge
(Euphorbia sp.), from Herbarium (), engraving.
Apuleius Platonicus, ‘Physician Gathering Herbs’, from Herbarium,
c. .
 The Herbarium (fifth century ) of Apuleius Platonicus
(also known as Lucius Apuleius of Madaura and Pseudo-
Apuleius) drew on data extracted from Pliny, Theophrastus
and Dioscorides. His manuscript later became one of the
first books to make use of the new printing press. Herbarium
Apuleii Platonici () was the first printed herb book to fea-
ture illustrations. Its success encouraged a host of imitators
(Herbarius Moguntinus, in Latin, ; Herbarius, also known as
Gart der Gesundheit, in German, ; and Hortus Sanitatis, in
Latin, ). This was long before copyright was even imag-
ined, so all of these books borrowed freely from classical
authors and each other. The Herbarium was the first herbal
text to appear in England, becoming the model for later texts
such as Nicholas Culpeper’s The English Physitian.
The Grete Herball (), while not the first herb book
published in England, was the first to feature detailed botan-
ical information. It was based almost entirely on Herbarius zu
Tetsch () and Le Grand Herbier (), the former being
the precursor to a great flowering of German herbals in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Otto Brunfels’s Herb -
arium Vivae Eicones (), Leonhart Fuchs’s De Historia
Stirpium (), Jerome Bock (Hieronymous Tragus)’s Kreuter
Büch (–) and Valerius Cordus’s Historia Plantarum
() and Dispensatorium (published posthumously, )
are the founding works of German botany. These books
have fine woodcut illustrations and those in the  edition
of Fuchs’s book were extensively copied in later herbals
(such as A New Herball, Turner, –; Crüydeboeck, Dodoens,
; Nieve Herball, Lyte, ; Historia Plantarum Universalis,
Bauhin, ; Anleitung, Schinz, ). Charles Estienne’s
Agriculture et maison rustique () was the first book on the
subject, written in French. In it he recommends that herb
gardens should contain many scented herbs, including balm,

 Nicholas Culpeper,
from The English
Physitian (),
engraving.

basil, costmary, hyssop, lavender, marjoram, rosemary, sage

and thyme.
The competition between these herbals to secure what
we would call ‘market share’ was fierce. Fuchs, for example,
wrote, ‘Among all the herbals which exist today, there are none
which have more of the crassest errors than those which
Egenolph, the printer, has already published again and again.’
Egenolph had included, without permission, plates pirated
from Fuchs’s book as illustrations for a new edition of Gart
der Gesundheit (Fuchs’s rant did little to discourage Egenolph’s
sales; his publications remained in print for  years).

 John Gerard’s The Herball, or Generall Historie of Plants is
among the most famous of the early books on the subject.
Published in , the book draws upon many of the herbals
listed above but adds good descriptions of the plants. Unfor-
tunately, the book also includes a lot of folklore or, as modern
food scholars would say, ‘fakelore’. To this day, herb books
exhibit this tendency, which either charms or exasperates
modern readers.
For English-speaking readers, Nicholas Culpeper (–
), while not the first British herbalist, is the real beginning
of the herbal tradition. Culpeper was also an astrologer, which

Leonhart Fuchs,
from Der Nieuwer
Herbaris, ,
engraving.

Leonhart Fuchs,
‘Common Plantain’
(Plantago major),
from De Historia
Stirpium (),
engraving.


John Gerard, title page of The Herball, .
John Gerard, ‘Marigolds’ (Calendula officinalis) from The Herball,
th century.
means his work is an example of a shortcoming often seen
in herbal literature: the admixture of arcane notions, such as
astrology, alchemy and the Doctrine of Signatures, with use-
ful pragmatically obtained information. His book, The English
Physitian, better known today as Culpeper’s Herbal (), was
carried to the new colonies in North America, primarily as a
medical text.
One of the first ‘herb’ books to focus on the culinary as
opposed to the medicinal properties of herbs was John Eve-
lyn’s  Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets. The term ‘Acetaria’
was borrowed from Pliny and referred to a ‘vinegar diet’, the
belief that eating raw cabbages with vinegar made them more
healthful and easy to digest. It was followed by Sidney Smith’s
An Herb Sallad for the Tavern Bowl (), which featured a

Mandrake, from
a Saxon herbal.
Mandrake was one
of the Doctrine
of Signatures’
favourite cure-alls.
Because its roots
were said to res -
emble a human
body, it was said
to cure almost
any disease.


‘Mandrake’ (Mandragora autumnalis), from Pflanzenbuch (Book of Plants,
c. ).

recipe including, ‘all lettuces, sorrel, salad burnet, tarragon,

lovage, shallots, garlic chives, chervil, watercress and parsley’.
Valerius Cordus was especially significant because, unlike
many of his Germanic contemporaries, he travelled to Italy
to see at first hand the Mediterranean herbs that were the
core of the European herbal tradition. Herbals, even to this
day, are prone to repetition of ‘facts’ (proven or otherwise) that
come from older herbal texts. This reliance on authority – as
opposed to observation and experiment – should have been
rendered obsolete by the new scientific method espoused in
Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (), but somehow survives

in much of the herbal literature. This was despite the fact that
Culpeper, in his ‘Original Epistle to the Reader’, wrote:

I cannot build my faith upon Authors’ words, nor believe

a thing because they say it, and could wish every body
were of my mind in this – to labour to be able to give a
reason for every thing they say or do. They say Reason
makes a man differ from a Beast; if that be true, pray
what are they that, instead of reason for their judgment,
quote old Authors?

Other Uses
While we tend to think of herbs as primarily culinary, or as
alternative medicines, before modern times they occupied a
much larger part of people’s everyday lives. For one thing,
they were not ‘alternative’ medicine in the past – before the
creation of modern drugs, most of which are entirely syn-
thetic, doctors’ entire pharmacopoeia was based on herbs.
Some of our drugs are the descendants of early herbal reme-
dies (aspirin is a synthetic variation on extracts from willow
bark; ‘salicylic acid’ refers to the willow genus, Salix). Like-
wise, many of today’s botanical names are etymologically
connected to the ancient names used by apothecaries. The use
of today’s alternative medicines reflect a distrust of modern
science that sometimes arises from the lack of success of
some modern treatments, but also from an urge to connect to
a past that is seen as simpler, purer, than the frantic world we
now inhabit. One could argue that the Slow Food movement
reflects similar motivations.
Whether they were grown in special gardens, or simply
gathered in the wild, herbs served a host of uses that have

largely disappeared today. At one time they provided virtually
all dyestuffs (with the exception of cochineal, which is made
from a small aphid-like insect: Dactylopius coccus). That changed
in  when William Henry Perkin created the first synthetic
dye: mauveine. The colour is named for a wild plant of the
mallow (Malva) family – ‘mauve’ is French for ‘mallow’, which
had been used as a name for the colour for nearly two cen-
turies. Ironically, Perkin discovered the dyestuff by accident.
He had been trying to synthesize a totally different botanical
substance from coal-tar (a by-product of the production of
the gas used for lighting in the nineteenth century): quinine.
The world was a smellier place in the days before air
fresheners came in aerosol cans, and hygiene was practised
somewhat less enthusiastically than it is today. We might use
botanicals to scent the air in pot pourri or pomanders but
we do so because they are charmingly old-fashioned, not
because they are particularly effective. Sweet-smelling herbs
played a much larger role in the past. Fragrant herbs and
flowers were commonly strewn on floors to absorb what-
ever might have fallen there, to discourage infestations of
small vermin and to release their pleasant scents when trod

Peter Schoeffer,
‘Coriander’
(Coriandrum
sativum), from
Herbarius Latinus
(), engraving.


The aromatic herbs market, Taibei (Taiwan).
upon. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
aromatic herbs like meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), mug-
wort (Artemisia vulgaris), sweet woodruff, rosemary and yarrow
served as multi-functional carpets. While peasants tossed wild
herbs on the floors of their homes themselves, royal house-
holds employed full-time strewers to collect sweet-smelling
herbs, spread them around the floors of their castles and
remove them after they had lost their freshness.
During the reign of Henry  Thomas Tusser listed
sixteen other herbs – and a few flowers – that were consid-
ered essential for strewers. They included basil (Ocimum spp.),
camphor or costmary, chamomile (Anthemis spp.), fennel,
germander (Teucrium chamaedrys), hyssop, three different laven-
ders, lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), marjoram (Origanum
majorana), pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium), mints (Mentha spp.),
sage (Salvia officinalis), tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) and winter
savory (Satureja montana).
Strewing was such an important function that King James
 created the position of Royal Herb Strewer in the seven-
teenth century. The position became purely ceremonial after the
death of George , but has been passed down as an honorary
title to this day.

The Basics
Early accounts of herbs were largely medical, though occasional
culinary mentions of them can be seen. The ancient Egyptians
used many herbs, and their names for them have come down
to us largely through the work of Theophrastus (– ).
The foliage of coriander (Coriandrum sativum) was called okhion
by the Ancient Egyptians. Its seeds were carefully placed in
Tutankhamun’s tomb. Long afterwards, Pliny believed the

 Francisco Hernandez,
‘Agave’ (Agave spp),
from Rerum Medicarum
(), engraving.

best-quality coriander still came from Egypt. Dill (Anethum

graveolens) was another familiar herb to the ancient Egyptians.
The Egyptians called their mustard (Sinapis arvensis) euthmoi,
while their hedge mustard (Sisymbrium officinalis) was erethmou.
Chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium) was known and used as early as
Egypt’s Middle Kingdom; like coriander, a basket of chervil
seeds was included in Tutankhamun’s tomb for his journey to
the afterlife.
Pliny the Elder describes the flowering habit of basil
(Ocimum basilicum) but his description is so inaccurate that it
suggests that he was describing some other plant entirely.
Elsewhere, he provides advice that seems utterly ludicrous:
basil seeds should be planted ‘with the utterance of curses and
imprecations, the result being that it grows all the better for it;

the earth, too, is rammed down when it is sown, and prayers
offered that the seed may never come up.’
Pliny lumped all members of the allium family together
as ‘bulbs’. He described varieties from all over the Roman
Empire (yet praised squill, Scilla spp., most highly, which –
among all the alliums – is probably the least eaten today). He
mentioned spring onions or scallions as being ‘employed for
seasonings’, as opposed to the use of other alliums as vege-
tables. Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) was a favourite among the
ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Fennel branches sat
under Roman bread while it baked. Hippocrates listed rose-
mary (Rosmarinus officinalis) and sage – which grow wild all
around the Mediterranean, and were common in Ancient
Egypt – in his Materia Medica. He considered mint a useful
medical plant.

Rosemary blossoms (Rosmarinus officinalis), in the herb gardens of

The Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, New York.


 Pliny wrote about mint, in a more culinary vein, that it is
‘used in the dishes at rustic entertainments [and] pervades the
tables far and wide with its agreeable odour’. He also noted
that ‘once planted, it lasts a considerable length of time’, a
tendency that plagues modern gardeners. Of common
thyme (Thymus vulgaris) Pliny wrote that ‘[m]ost mountains
abound with wild thyme’ and that it was commonly gathered
in Greece. Pliny commented that mustard’s pungency is
‘rendered imperceptible by boiling; the leaves, too, are boiled
just the same way as those of other vegetables’ (that is, as a
pot-herb). His observation was accurate, even if the reason
is something he could not have known. The ‘hot’ compounds
(isothiocyanates) in mustard and horseradish are only created
when enzymes in the plants react with other compounds in
the plant (when cells are broken, allowing the chemicals to

Leonhart Fuchs,
‘Sage’ (Salvia offici-
nalis), from De
Historia Stirpium
(), engraving.


Common thyme (Thymus vulgaris). This is part of a huge patch that escaped
from a garden in Schroon Lake, New York.

react). If these plants are cooked before the reaction occurs,

heat destroys the enzymes, so no isothiocyanates are formed.
Pliny described parsley (Petroselinum crispum) as a salad herb.
He devoted much of chapter  (Book ) to parsley, but
several of the plants he described are poisonous members of
Apiaceae. Pliny suggested using savory with onions, ‘the onions
being all the finer for it’. Elsewhere, Pliny seems to confuse
lovage (Ligusticum levisticum) with satureia, which has given us
the name of the genus for savory (Satureja).
Culpeper believed basil was vile and dangerous. His rea-
soning: ‘Something is the matter; this herb and rue will not
grow together, no, nor near one another: and we know rue is
as great an enemy to poison as any that grows’ and he con-
cludes that he ‘dare write no more of it’. Nonetheless, basil
was used in seventeenth-century England to flavour Fetter
Lane sausage. Culpeper called oregano (Origanum vulgare) ‘wind

marjoram’ – no doubt meaning ‘wild marjoram’ – and did not
mention a single culinary use for it. Apparently pizza was not
part of his regular diet.
Culpeper excused himself from describing the many herbs
that were ‘so well known that [they] need no description’.
Among them were bay leaf (Laurus nobilis), winter sweet mar-
joram or pot marjoram and parsley as well as summer and
winter savories (Satureja spp.), ‘being entertained as constant

Bay leaf (Laurus nobilis), here grown in a greenhouse, since it can’t

withstand northern winters.


Spearmint (Mentha spicata) growing on the Clermont Estate, Germantown,
New York.

inhabitants in our gardens’, needed no description from

Culpeper (and, apparently, merited no mention of culinary
usage). Rosemary was also ignored – though he was ready
to perpetuate the notion that rosemary was good for the
memory (he felt the same way about sage) – and tarragon
(Artemisia dracunculus ‘sativa’) doesn’t even appear in Culpeper.
He says just one thing about mint: that it helps ‘a stinking
breath’.
Mustard’s ‘round yellowish seed, [is] sharp, hot, and
biting upon the tongue’, wrote Culpeper (who, when it came
to matters gustatory, was always ready to state the obvious).

Timothy Sheldrake, ‘Dill’ (Anethum graveolens), from Botanicum Medicinale
(–).
‘It is in vain to describe an herb so commonly known’, wrote
Culpeper. He felt the same about wild thyme (mother of
thyme), T. serpyllum – and included no culinary information
about either. In fact he had little to say about the culinary uses
of the herbs he described, and said that chervil ‘is sown in
gardens for a sallad herb’.
Culpeper thought that dill, compared with fennel, had ‘a
strong unpleasant scent’. He also believed that ‘cives’ (chives,
Allium schoenoprasum) were dangerous unless administered by
a physician. He wrote,

Chive blossom
(Allium schoeno-
prasum). These
edible blossoms
make wonderful
garnishes.


 if they be eaten raw (I do not mean raw, opposite to
roasted or boiled, but raw, opposite to chymical prepar-
ation) they send up very hurtful vapours to the brain,
causing troublesome sleep, and spoiling the eye-sight,
yet of them prepared by the art of the alchymist, may be
made an excellent remedy for the stoppage of the urine.

Culpeper tells us that watercress (Nasturtium officinalis)

‘tastes somewhat hot and sharp’. He also advises ‘those that
would live in health, may use it if they please; if they will not,
I cannot help it. If any fancy not pottage, they may eat the
herb as a sallad.’ The familiar flowers called ‘nasturtiums’
(Tropaeolum majus) are in the same family, and produce similar
pungency in varying degrees. ‘Cress’ refers to three different

The nasturtium’s (Tropaeolum majus) flowers and leaves add a hot, mustard-
like kick to salads and sandwiches.


plants: upland cress, Barbarea verna, watercress and garden
cress, Lepidium sativum. They all share a peppery taste due to the
presence of compounds in common with other cruciferous
species, such as horseradish and mustard.

Less Common Herbs

A great number of herbs that were once well known are less
familiar today, and tend to be overlooked except by gardeners
or serious cooks who are always searching for unusual
ingredients. Occasionally, they are rediscovered and enjoy
a resurgence of popularity; rocket (arugula) and coriander
(cilantro) are typical. Pliny believed that rocket (Eruca vesicaria
subs. sativa) was ‘a great provocative of lust’ and recom-
mended that it be combined with lettuce, so that ‘the excess
of cold in the one [be] compensated by the equal degree of
heat in the other’. Culpeper thought rocket was only of
use as a ‘sallad herb’, hence not worthy of mention. He does
opine at length about ‘common wild rocket’, with descrip-
tion and medical usage. Rocket – the Egyptians called it
ethrekigkin – has been a popular salad green in Europe for
ages but was rediscovered in American kitchens only in the
past decade or so. Culpeper also thought angelica (Angelica
archangelica) was ‘so well known to be growing almost in every
garden’, yet today it is only known, if at all, for its pale green
candied stems.
Calamus or sweet flag (Acorus calamus) was familiar to the
ancient Egyptians, who used it medicinally, and as an aphro-
disiac. Today its essential oil is an ingredient in some teas and
liqueurs: Altvater, Benedictine, Campari, some gins, vermouth
and both yellow and green Chartreuse. Egyptians knew
chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile), but we don’t know what use

they made of it. Culpeper, once again, considered the plant
to be too familiar to merit a description, let alone mention
its culinary properties (all the teas, decoctions, infusions in
wine and so on, according to that herbalist, served medical
purposes only). He felt the same way about lavender (Lavan-
dula spp.) – which was indeed well known, and had been for
a long time – the lavender used in Ancient Egypt (L. stoechas)
was called suphlo.
Gardeners know several Achillea species, such as iva (A.
moschata) and yarrow (A. millefolium), but are probably unaware
that the astringent, bitter and peppery foliage has been used
sparingly to flavour cheeses, in place of hops in some beers and
as a bitter component in various digestifs. Another component
of digestifs is balm, or lemon balm. Native to southern Europe,
it could be grown in medieval monastery gardens well into
the more temperate zones. Monks used it in their formula-
ries for liqueurs, such as Benedictine (which is actually a fairly
modern recipe in the style of the drinks invented by monks)
and Chartreuse. Its use probably diminished when inexpen-
sive lemons from warmer climates became available in the
twentieth century. Today it is finding renewed popularity
precisely because its lemony scent is milder, and it doesn’t
have the same intensely acidic taste – it’s like a Meyer lemon
in herbal form. Another lemon substitute from ancient times
was verbena. Hippocrates, in his Materia Medica, lists verbena
(Verbena officinalis), but it’s not the one we know today. Ours
(Aloysia triphylla) is from South America and could not have
been known in pre-Columbian Rome. Both species get their
lemony aroma from the same compound: citral.
Of course, the herb we most associate with beer is hops
(Humulus lupulus) – the bitter compound lupulin acts as a pre-
servative. Ancient Babylon’s Jews flavoured their barley beer
with hops. Pliny the Elder described young shoots of hops

cooked as a pot-herb. It was mentioned by Hildegard, the
Abbess of Rupertsburg, as an additive for oat beer, in ,
and was used in Holland from the early fourteenth century.
Supposedly, ‘herisie and beere came hopping into England
both in a yeere’ – as Henry Buttes wrote in  (Dyet’s Dry
Dinner). The ‘yeere’ in question was , when the Lollards
were stirring up dissent against the Roman Catholic Church

Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), a cultivar named ‘Hidecote’, in Cornell

University’s herb garden.


 Leonhart Fuchs,
‘Hops’ (Humulus
lupulus), from De
Historia Stirpium
(), engraving.

(well before Henry  decided that excommunication was

preferable to an heirless marriage). Buttes was mistaken about
hops, though – they had been in England since Roman times.
In fact, England’s Henry  banned the use of hops in beer
in the early fifteenth century. That prohibition was dropped
during the reign of Edward , a century and a half later.
Marijuana (Cannabis sativa) was used in place of hops in
the beer known as ‘Hi-Brew’; no longer produced, it was made
in Amsterdam by Brouwerij ’t . Obviously a popular intox-
icant on its own, marijuana – sometimes casually referred to
as ‘herb’ on the street – actually has had some use, historically,
as a culinary herb. Mapouchari is a kind of compound butter
made with marijuana in Egypt. The seeds were fried in ancient
Scythia as a dessert. Marijuana seeds, asanomi, are used in Jap -
anese tofu ‘burgers’, called ganmo. In Eastern Europe, especially
Poland and Russia, the seeds are parched and eaten. Like Alice
B. Toklas’s famous ‘brownies’ – which were actually fudge –

Apuleius Platonicus, ‘Artemisias’, from Herbarium, c. .
This French poster advertises Absinthe de Pontarlier, th century.

hashish is made into candy (majoun) in Algeria and Morocco.

It is made of dried fruits such as dates, figs and raisins, and
seasoned with aniseed, cinnamon, ginger, honey and ground
almonds or walnuts. Few of the ancients ever thought of
smoking this herb, though the Assyrians did sometimes burn
it – ‘in fumigation to dispel sorrow or grief ’.

 Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) and wormwood (A. absinthium)
both appear in Hippocrates’ Materia Medica. Artemisias were
known in antiquity: the Romans believed that the goddess
Diana first gave them to Chiron, the Centaur who instructed
Aesculapius in the art of medicine. We know wormwood
today as the key ingredient in absinthe, and Pliny described a
wormwood-flavoured wine called absintites. Tansy (Tanacetum
vulgare) is another bitter, aromatic and vaguely citrusy herb
that is reminiscent of absinthe.
Horehound’s (Marrubium vulgare) generic name is derived
from Hebrew ‘marob’, and it was originally one of the seder’s

Horehound (Marrubium vulgare) in the herb gardens of Cornell University,

New York City.


bitter herbs. To temper its bitterness the herb was often
combined with honey (for example, to reduce respiratory
problems). Today, that usage survives – just barely – in old-
fashioned cough drops (horehound syrups for this purpose
were common in Culpeper’s day). Craig Claiborne, writing
in , listed horehound among the ‘herbs and spices with
limited, quaint, or questionable virtues’, describing candy
made from it as ‘rather unpleasant [and] perverse-tasting’,
but there are still a few of us who disagree.
The names of some herbs have survived from ancient
times but they may no longer be applied to the same plants
today. The ‘hyssop’ mentioned in the Bible is not the modern
hyssop, Hyssopus officinalis, but probably one of the many herbs
known today as ‘za’atar’. According to chemists Alexander
Fleisher and Zhenia Fleisher, who specialize in the study of the
kinds of aromatic oils found in herbs, the most likely species
to have been the biblical hyssop is Majorana syriaca. Za’atar
is a collective name for a group of herbs used in the Middle East.
It includes members of several genera (Calamintha, Origanum,
Satureja and Thymus). What they have in common is a high con-
centration of thymol, the essential oil characteristic of thyme
and for which it is named. The herb should not be confused
with a spice blend also called zathar and zattar that is popular
in the region: it is usually a ground mixture of dried thyme (or
za’atar), toasted sesame seeds and sumac berries. The herb
and the seasoning mixture are mixed with olive oil as a dip
for bread.
Another plant that is commonly used to add a tart, sour
taste to foods in what was once known as ‘the Levant’ – but
is rarely utilized elsewhere – is sumac (Rhus pentaphylla and
R. tripartite), species indigenous to the Mediterranean basin.
Their flavour is reminiscent of green apples because of their
malic acid content (Malus being the genus for apples). Sumac

is featured in Arabic, Kurdish, Persian and Turkish dishes. The
New World’s equivalents are smooth sumac (R. glabra) and
staghorn sumac (R. typhina). They can be used the same ways
as their Old World cousins, but – as Boy Scouts can tell you
– they are easily made into a tart, lemonade-like beverage.
Any Rhus species that has white berries should never be
touched – they are best known as poison ivy (R. toxicodendron),
poison oak (R. diversiloba) and poison sumac (R. vernix).
Other herbs, once very popular, have virtually disappeared
from our kitchens. Lovage is one of the most-often included
herbs in Apicius’ De Re Coquinaria (along with rue), yet is
rarely seen except on menus that consciously try to recreate
the flavour of long-lost dishes. It has a strong celery-like
aroma. Dioscorides tells us that the Egyptians knew rue (Ruta
graveolens) as ephnoubon. Hippocrates’ Materia Medica listed the
herb. Exceedingly bitter, rue was nonetheless a popular ingre-
dient in Ancient Rome, and Pliny says it was added to honeyed
wine in the third century .
One herb that has a well-known but very narrow usage is
woodruff (Galium odoratum). This native of the Mediterranean
region is known primarily for its use in flavouring May wine
or Maiwein, a popular spring drink in Germany now made
commercially with artificial flavouring, since woodruff is toxic
in all but small amounts.
An entire group of plants have been developed solely for
their scents: geraniums (Pelargonium spp.) come in a wide range
of scented species and have been bred to produce dozens
of scented cultivars and hybrids, such as apple geranium (P.
odoratissimum), chocolate mint geranium (P. tomentosum), lemon
geranium (P. crispum) and nutmeg geranium (P. fragrans).
Some wild herbs went on to become carefully cultivated
plants. Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) is the weedy ancestor
of the subspecies D. carota L. ssp. sativus – our domestic carrot.

Rue (Ruta graveolens ‘Blue Mound’), another bitter herb.

Though the roots are too tough to eat, the foliage makes a
flavourful addition to soups, and the seeds have a warm caraway-
like taste. The common name refers to the beheading of Henry
’s second wife Anne Boleyn, who wore a large lacy collar
to her execution. In the exact centre of each flower, there’s a
tiny dot of deep bloody red.
There are some wild herbs that are never intentionally
planted anymore – stinging nettles (Urtica dioica), for example.
The botanical name is derived from the Latin for ‘I burn.’ If

handled carefully, with heavy gloves and long sleeves, the
leaves make an excellent pot-herb or soup green in early spring.
The tiny stinging needles are rendered harmless by the heat
of cooking. Samuel Pepys mentioned ‘some nettle porridge’
that he enjoyed on  February . The nettles’ sting, by
the way, is caused by formic acid in tiny needle-like hairs on
the leaves and stems. It’s the same compound that causes the
burning sensation of ant bites.
Salad herbs were used as such long before John Evelyn
published his pamphlet, Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets, in .
Pot-herbs have also been in use, at least since early man discov-
ered how to use fire to prepare food. Today we tend to think
of ‘herbs’ as another form of spice, a seasoning for other foods,
rather than as foods in their own right. It has not always been
so (and, as we will see elsewhere, this broader sense of herbs
is still in force in some parts of the world). Theophrastus called
purslane (Portulaca oleracea) ‘andrákhne’, and mentioned its use as
a cooked green. Culpeper thought its use as a ‘sallad herb’ too
well-known to require mention. It is still occasionally eaten as
a salad green and pot-herb today. The sour young greens of
sorrel (Rumex spp.) are cooked in soups. Oxalic acid provides
the sharp tang, which becomes more pronounced as the plant
matures. The acid is said to soften the bones of fish – so it is
often cooked with pike (which has free-floating forked bones
that are difficult to remove) – although it is unlikely that the
minute quantities of oxalic acid would have much effect on
those deeply embedded bones. Watercress (Nasturtium officinale)
is pleasantly pungent; the name of the genus is derived from
the Latin words for ‘twist the nose’. Pliny recommended that
a ‘sluggish man should eat nasturtium, to arouse him from
his torpidity’. The edible flowers we call ‘nasturtiums’ are a
different species (Tropaeolum majus) but contain the same pep-
pery compound, phenylethylene isothiocyanate, that gives

wasabi and mustard their bite. Those ‘nasturtiums’ originated
in the Andes of South America, so would never have been
known to Pliny.
Bergamots (Monarda spp.) are usually grown for their
flowers, but the flowers and foliage contain thymol – the
principle flavour component of thyme – and can be used in
place of that herb, or brewed into tea. They should not be
confused, however, with the bergamot in Earl Gray tea. That
‘bergamot’ is actually a kind of bitter orange (Citrus aurantium
subs. Bergamia) whose dried peels are used in formulating
many distilled beverages, such as Altvater, Amaretto, gin and
Grand Marnier.
Borage (Borago officinalis), little-known today, was – accord-
ing to Culpeper –

chiefly used as a cordial, and [is] good for those that are
weak in long sickness, and to comfort the heart and spirits
of those that are in a consumption, or troubled with often
swoonings, or passions of the heart.

Today, cordials still cheer our hearts – but not in the med-
ical sense that Culpeper meant. For example, borage lends its
herbal flavour to some alcoholic mixtures (it’s reputed to be
one of the secret ingredients in Pimm’s No. ); one synonym,
‘cool tankard’, implies that usage. It has a slight cucumber
taste, which is why Pimm’s is usually garnished with a slice of
cucumber. Burnet (Poterium sanguisorba), native to southern
Europe, was at one time a common salad herb, as the name
‘salad burnet’ suggests. Like borage it has a cucumber-like
flavour but its delicate foliage makes it a better garnish than
the rather coarse leaves of borage. Cooked borage, however,
is a popular filling for many local varieties of Italian ravioli
(such as the agnolotti of Novara, mandili ’nversoi from Piemonte

and zembi d’arzillo from Liguria) and as a green colourant for
spinach-like pastas (bardele coi morai, from Lombardy, corzetti
from Piemonte, tagliolini and picagge from Liguria, and stracci
from Ciociaria).
Catnip or catmint (Nepeta cataria) was known in the ancient
world as a medicinal herb, but was grown as a culinary herb

Catnip (Nepeta cataria), because our gardens are not just for the enjoyment
of humans.


for use in soups and stews back as far as the fifteenth century.
It was still a condiment and an ingredient in sauces in eight-
eenth-century England. There is some difference of opinions
among feline connoisseurs of catnip. Some of our cats have
indulged in the drug openly, some furtively, while others seem
willing to defend to the death their little stashes from any
potential intruders. Most cats prefer the dried herb – no
doubt because of its concentrated dose of the active ingredi-
ent, nepetalactone – other cats simply lie in the middle of a
patch of catnip, grazing in a kind of nepeta-induced stupor.
Pliny the Elder listed chicory and lettuce (Cichorium intybus
and Lactuca spp.) in Book  of his Natural History. Lettuce
was also mentioned by Horace and Virgil as a salad herb. He
said that it grew wild and was cultivated in Egypt, where it
was known as seris. He also warned of certain purple forms of
Lettuce ‘known to some persons as the astytis, and to others
as the eunychion, it having the effect, in a remarkable degree, of
quenching the amorous propensities’. That is, they had the
opposite effect of aphrodisiacs (we suspect that the demand
for such salad ingredients was similarly quenched by that
assertion). Radicchio is a variety of chicory that has become a
popular salad ingredient, and is sometimes braised as a vege-
table. The diminutive Italian name is derived from Latin ‘radix’,
meaning ‘root’ (a number of bitter Mediterranean greens –
such as chicory, dandelions and lettuces – have strong tap
roots). The names ‘endive’ and ‘chicory’ are derived from the
Arabic hindeb and schikhrieh, respectively. Culpeper doesn’t even
mention chicory. The young leaves of dandelion (Taraxacum
officinale ssp. officinale) make a pleasant early spring salad, the
older foliage a pot-herb, the dried roots (like those of chicory)
can be roasted as a substitute for coffee, and the flowers
flavour an old-fashioned wine. Greeks refer to any wild greens
as horta – amaranth, dandelions, mustard greens, nettles or

any other bitter green found growing in the wild; in Mexico,
they’re quelites.

Herb Gardens
According to Pliny, ‘Epicurus, that connoisseur in the enjoy-
ments of a life of ease, was the first to lay out a garden at
Athens; up to his time it had never been thought of, to dwell
in the country in the middle of the town.’ The gardens Pliny
described were vegetable and flower gardens, but both
contained herbs. Herb gardens as we know them began to
appear in the late Middle Ages, coinciding with the rise in
popularity of herbal books. Other classical writers whose
work influenced the design of medieval and Renaissance
herb gardens include Cato (De Agri Cultura), Columella (De
Re Rustica), Dioscorides (De Materia Medica), Palladius (Opus
Agriculturae or De Re Rustica) and Varro (Rerum Rusticarum).
Around , Charlemagne issued a charter that specified
how everything in his empire (the Holy Roman Empire) was
to be managed. The seventieth chapter of his Capitulare de
villis vel curtis imperialibus (Charter of Imperial Lands and Imperial
Courts) included a listing of all the plants he required to be
grown in his gardens throughout the empire. The culinary
herbs included abrotanum (southernwood, Artemisia abrotanum),
adripias (garden orache, Atriplex hortensis), ameum (spignel, Meum
athamanticum), anesum (aniseed, Pimpinella anisum), anetum (dill),
cerfolium (chervil), ciminum (cumin, Cuminum cyminum), coriandrum
(coriander), costum (costmary, Tanacetum balsamita), diptamnum
(dittany of Crete, Origanum dictamnus), febrefugiam (common
centaury, Centaurium erythrae), fenicolum (fennel), fenigrecum (fenu-
greek, Trigonella foenum-graecum), intubas (chicory), levisticum
(lovage), malvas (mallows), mentam (wild mint, Mentha arvensis),

 P. A. Mattioli
(trans.), (Oxalis
spp.), Les com-
mentaries sur les
six livres de la
matiere medecinale
de Pedacius
Dioscuride (),
engraving.

mentastrum (apple mint, M. suaveolens), nastursium (garden cress),

neptam népite (catnip), olisatum (alexanders, Smyrnium olustrum),
parduna (burdock, Arctium lappa), peledium (pennyroyal), petresil-
inum (parsley), rosmarinum (rosemary), rutam (rue), salviam (sage),
satureium (savory), sclareiam (clary sage, Salvia sclarea), sinape
(mustard), sisimbrium (water mint, M. aquatica), tanazitam (tansy),
and vulgigina (European wild ginger, Asarum europaeum). Charle-
magne’s requirements for gardens, laid out in clean grids,
would have included many other medicinal and practical
herbs (such as madder, Rubia tinctorum).
In the ninth century a plan was developed (but never
executed) for a Swiss Benedictine monastery at St Gall. The

Apuleius Platonicus, ‘Rhizotomists Gathering Herbs’, from Herbarium,
c. .
 Hieronymus
Brunschwig,
‘A Medieval
Garden of
Herbs’, from
Liber de Arte
Distillandi (),
engraving.

plan includes kitchen and medicinal gardens, herbers – neat

raised beds in the former for chervil, coriander, dill, lettuce,
parsley and savory; the latter to be planted with lovage,
pennyroyal, peppermint, rue, sage, savory and watercress. At
the end of the thirteenth century Albertus Magnus recom-
mended borders of fragrant herbs, where ‘men may sit down
there to take their repose pleasurably when their senses
need refreshment’. A fifteenth-century illustration of a
herb garden appears in Piero de’ Crescendi’s Liber Ruralium
Commodorum, a guidebook for managing country estates. Such
estates were thought to be safe from the ills of the cities,
including the plague. Boccaccio’s Decameron is set on just such
an estate, outside of Florence. In fact, many gardens of the
period were based on descriptions in the Decameron. Such

gardens were highly stylized recreations of the nature that
was already disappearing in Europe, small representations of
paradise lost; indeed, the plan for St Gall used the term para-
dise for the gardens that provided cut flowers for the church.
In the Renaissance the efficient grids and raised beds
gave way to more ornamental layouts. In particular, knotted
and more complex geometric patterns – often with carefully
chosen coloured gravel between the beds, and bordered by
perfectly pruned hedges of boxwood or rosemary – began to
be seen (in England, during the reign of Elizabeth ). Good
examples of knot gardens can be seen, today, at Antony House
(Cornwall), Hatfield House (Hertfordshire), St Fagans (South
Wales), Knowle (Solihull) and Red Lodge Museum (Bristol),
in the ; Alexandra Hicks Herb Knot Garden (University of
Michigan), the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and the Cleveland
Botanical Garden (Ohio) in the ; and Anzac Square,
Dunedin, New Zealand.

A cartouche from the title page of some editions of Gerard’s Herball

() showing simple rectangular raised beds.


 A walled garden would be known as Hortus Conclusus.
Boccaccio’s Decameron described an Italian walled garden in
the mid-fifteenth century. Such gardens often exhibited an-
cient sculpture (or copies thereof) or fragments of ruins – a
foreshadowing of the follies and fabriques that began to built
on English and French estates in the eighteenth century. Some
design elements were borrowed from Moorish sources, at
the same time as Western Europeans were rediscovering the
classic literature, philosophy and science that had been pre-
served in Islamic libraries. Some Islamic gardens, such as the
one in Spain’s Alhambra, featured sunken beds, arranged in
Roman-style grids, to facilitate watering in the dry climate.

John Parkinson,
Paradisi in Sole,
Paradisus Terrestris,
, engraving.


William Lawson, plan for a knotted garden, from The Country Housewife’s
Garden (), engraving.

Some eighteenth-century herb gardens have been pre-

served (or recreated). Pomona Hall, just outside modern
Camden, New Jersey, has brick paths between beds of famil-
iar herbs that would have been brought from Europe: garlic
chives, lemon balm, lamb’s ears (Stachys spp.), lavender, lovage,
mint, rosemary, sage, thyme and yarrow.
Following the Age of Exploration and the rise of coloni -
alism, herb gardens began to incorporate more exotic species
brought back from the far ends of empire. The Victorians,
especially, loved to fill their homes with large and often bizarre
tropical species, such as Monstera deliciosa and various palms.

Isabelle Forrest, ‘An Edwardian herb border in June’, watercolour. Left,
back to front: caraway, tarragon, rue, mint, parsley, sage, thyme, purple
sage, chives and thyme. Right, back to front: lemon balm, sorrel, borage,
chamomile, alkanet (Anchusa officinalis, also known as dyer’s bugloss) and
pot marigold.

Such decorations paralleled the trophy heads of exotic animals

upon Victorian walls – both celebrated British supremacy at
a time when its Empire had reached its greatest extent.
Later still, Victorian excesses were rejected in favour of
older styles. Medieval and Renaissance styles began to re-emerge,
and the gardens at Sissinghurst and Long Barn (created in the
period between  and  by Vita Sackville-West) combine
their structures with a more modern appreciation of contrasts
between plants of varying colour and texture. Sackville-West
had no interest in cooking – the only time she kept the herb
garden near the kitchen was during the food shortages of the
Second World War – but her decorative herb gardens featured
plenty of culinary herbs. Long Barn’s gardens included basil,
bergamot, chicory, hyssop, sage, at least two lavenders, two mar-
jorams (including a pink variety), peppermint, rue, southern-
wood, sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata), sweet woodruff, tarragon,

Peter Schoeffer,
‘Violet’ (Viola
spp.), from
Der Gart der
Gesundheit (),
engraving.

thymes and verbena. Sissinghurst’s garden was even more

extensive, adding two sages, three bergamots, five mints, seven
types of thyme and many more unusual species, such as
calamint (Calamintha nepeta), good King Henry (Chenopodium
bonus-henricus), horehound, melitot (Mellitotus officinalis), plus old
lady (Artemisia maritima) and old man (southernwood).
Sackville-West was influenced, as were many other people,
by the work of Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, a designer of, and a
writer about, gardening. Her books on herbs include A Garden
of Herbs (), The Old-World Pleasaunce (), Herbs and Herb
Gardening () and Culinary and Salad Herbs (). In The Old
English Herbals (), she wrote:

books on herbs were studied in England as early as the

eighth century . . . we know that Boniface, ‘the Apostle of
the Saxons,’ received letters from England asking him for
books on simples and complaining that it was difficult to
obtain the foreign herbs mentioned in those we already
possessed. But of these manuscripts none have survived,
the oldest we possess being of the tenth century.

 One of the earliest English books on herbs was a Saxon
translation of the Herbarium Apuleii Platonici.
Rohde may have been responsible for a modern rebirth
of interest in herb gardening in England and elsewhere.
However, as she has shown, it is clear that the English have
been interested in herbs for a very long time. Time and space
may limit many modern herb gardeners to a few pots on a
sunny windowsill, but the tradition continues nonetheless.


 3
A Less Eurocentric
Herbarium

Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas have their own herbs,
quite different from the usual suspects. Some are from fami-
lies of plants that are not found in Europe. Some have not yet
found a European market demand large enough to justify their
export (this may change, as the insatiable craving for culinary
novelty drives international trade). Many of these exotic species
are used in similar fashion to their European counterparts, but
sometimes they are so different from European cuisine that
they nearly constitute completely new forms of cookery.

Africa
African cooks tend to use spice mixtures more than herbs as
seasoning (and, considering Africa’s history, they tend to be
European or Arabic in nature). Most of the herbs used in
African cookery are native to Europe and the Americas (curry
leaf, Murraya koenigii; Kaffir lime leaf, Citrus hystrix; and lemon-
grass, Cymbopogon citrates, are Asian exceptions). Indigenous
herbs are often used as pot-herbs, in sauces or in brewing teas,
rather than as seasoning.


Pot-herbs are leafy vegetables that tend to be cooked in stews,
soups or braised dishes, all moist cooking methods. Efo is the
generic African term for edible green leaves, much like the
Mexican quelites. One of the main uses of such plants is as
a thickener for liquid foods. Baobab (Adansonia digitata), as an
example, is used as a foodstuff only in West Africa, even though
the trees are common in Eastern and Southern Africa. The
leaves are eaten as cooked greens and as additions to condi-
ments, relishes, soups and stews. They thicken these moist
dishes, much as okra does, and such sauces make a welcome
addition to starchy staple foods. For example: danwake is a
Hausa dish of cassava, chillis, black-eyed beans (peas), sorghum
and sweet potatoes, cooked in peanut oil, and bound with a
sauce thickened by baobab leaves.
Ebolo (Crassocephalum crepidioides) or in Sierra Leone, bologi,
grows in West Africa, where the leaves and young shoots are
prepared as pot-herbs. Lagos bologi is a different plant, used in
similar fashion; it is actually waterleaf (Talinum fruticosum).
Similarly, the young foliage of soko (Celosia argentea), a plant that
is closely related to amaranth, provides a pot-herb in Benin,
Congo and Nigeria, where it is cooked in dende (red palm oil),
with aubergine (eggplant), chillis and onions, along with fish
or meat. In Nigeria the Yoruban name sokoyokoto

literally means ‘the vegetable that makes your husband’s

face rosy,’ which we think is a wry – maybe sly – joke shared
among women in the marketplace.

Other wild herbs used as pot-herbs in Africa include

beggar ticks (Bidens pilosa) or Spanish needle, which are native
to South America but are weeds throughout much of the
world. Even though the young leaves are eaten as pot-herbs
in central and western Africa, it’s considered a noxious weed

in eastern Africa. The young foliage of moringa (Moringa oleifera
and twelve other Moringa species) is cooked like spinach and
its roots are grated as a substitute for horseradish.
Egusi is a thick soup that is popular all over West Africa.
It is often thickened with seeds from various watermelon-like
plants, such as fluted pumpkin (Telfairia occidentalis). The leaves
and shoots of fluted pumpkin, known as ugu leaf, are used as
pot-herbs all over West Africa. Louisiana gumbo, thickened
with filé powder, made from ground leaves and cambium
(inner bark) of sassafras (Sassafras albidum) was originally an
African slaves’ substitute for egusi. Mulukhiyyah (bush okra,
comfrey – not to be confused with the European medicinal
herb Symphytum peregrinum – jew’s marrow, nalta jute, Corchorus
olitorius) is available dried, fresh or frozen. Fresh leaves pro-
vide mucilaginous thickening to soups and stews, as true okra
serves in gumbos – and, like okra, if allowed to boil it becomes
unpleasantly stringy and gummy. This Middle Eastern ingre-
dient is found throughout Muslim-influenced Africa, especially
Egypt – but is also popular in Japan and the Philippines, where
it’s known as saluyot. There is another plant called mulukhiyyah,
an unrelated species not yet identified, that is used in Morocco
(also as a thickener). Its pods are used, rather than its foliage,
making it more like okra – the name and usage were applied
in Morocco, perhaps by pilgrims returning from Mecca who
had encountered C. olitorius in the east. The same, or similar,
plant is known in India as mitha pakh.
In African cookery it is sometimes difficult to decide
whether a dish is a soup, a stew or a sauce. ‘Soup-sauce-stew’
is more of a continuum than separate categories. Several
different plants provide the viscosity that, in classic French
cuisine, is found in emulsion-based sauces such as beurre
blanc, hollandaise and mayonnaise, and starch-thickened
sauces like velouté and béchamel.

 The dried and powdered leaves of the baobab tree are
known as kuka, and kadaro is a viscous sauce made from
kuka. Tibati is a similar sauce served with beans. Sauces and
stews called ‘palaver sauce’, are thickened with cassava (Manihot
esculenta) leaves in the West African countries of Ghana, Liberia,
Nigeria and Sierra Leone. A similar dish, pondu, is made in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cassava is native to the
Brazilian rainforest, where it is primarily consumed as a root
vegetable. It is eaten that way in Africa as well (sub-Saharan
Africans obtain more of their nutrition from roots and tubers
than the inhabitants of any other place in the world).
Some African herbs are treated not just as pot-herbs, but
as salad herbs. The leaves and flowers of tasselflowers (Emilia
coccinea and E. sonchifolia), for example, are eaten both ways.
They are indigenous to tropical Asia but commonly grown
in Ghana. Bananas (Musa spp.) are native to Africa, where they
are most commonly eaten as fruit but the leaves and flowers
are also used in cooking – in salads, as pot-herbs and, espe-
cially the leaves, as food wrappers (though such uses are much
more common in south Asia and Mexico than in Africa). Yan-
rin or wild lettuce (Launaea taraxacifolia, sometimes listed as
Sonchus taraxacifolius) is native to Ethiopia, but grows wild in
disturbed African soils between the Equator and the Tropic
of Cancer, as well as in Tanzania. In Nigeria cultivated versions
are preferred – they’re less bitter than the wild plants. Young
leaves are cooked in soups and added to salads.

Herbal teas, infusions or tisanes are commonly brewed from herbs

in Africa and, as in Europe and elsewhere, they blur the lines
between social beverages and medicines. Khat (Catha edulis)
grows as a small evergreen tree in Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen
and Zambia. Its leaves are brewed as tea. Its stimulating effect
is due to the presence of cathinone – an amphetamine-like

drug – and the milder cathine. The concentration of cathinone
is highest in fresh leaves. While it is legal in some Middle East-
ern countries – Israel, Oman and Yemen – it is illegal in Canada
and the , and listed as a Schedule  Controlled Substance in
the .
Not criminal, but linked – botanically – to one of the most
famous herbs said to possess psychoactive properties, African

William Turner, ‘Wormwood’ (Artemisia spp.) from A New Herball (),

engraving.


wormwood (Artemisia afra) is known as wilde-als in South Africa
(in Afrikaans) and zengana in Southern Sotho. Elsewhere, it’s
umhlonyane in Xhosa, mhlonyane in Zulu and lengana in Tswan.
This bitter relative of the European plant that gives us absinthe
is sometimes brewed as a tisane, or tea. Indigenous to South
Africa, it grows wild all the way to Ethiopia – it’s the African
equivalent of the sagebrush (A. tridentata) that grows in the
American west.
Mulukhiyyah’s dried leaves are sometimes also brewed
as a herbal tea. Presumably the herb loses its mucilaginous
properties when dried.
Honeybush leaves (Cyclopia genistoides, C. intermedia, C.
sessiliflora, C. subternata) are chopped, moistened and left to fer-
ment. They are then dried, much as black tea (Camellia sinensis)
is, but the resulting herbal tea has no caffeine and little tannin.
It is beginning to become popular with tea-drinkers outside
Africa. The best-known African herbal tea, however, is rooi-
bos (red bush, Aspalathus linearis). Its leaves are also moistened
and dried and oxidation produces the tea’s reddish-brown
colouration. In South Africa rooibos is sometimes brewed so
strong that it is considered a variation on espresso. Rooibos,
once gathered by Bushmen and Khoikhoi in South Africa,
was introduced to the West as a tea substitute that contained
no caffeine. It was marketed as Kaffree. Today, dozens of brands
include rooibos. In the opposite direction – both chemically
and geographically – caffeine-laden guarana (Paullinia cupana),
from South America, is featured in a number of commercial
‘energy drinks’. Despite its name, rooibos is not the reddest
herbal tea on the continent – wild rosella’s (Hibiscus sabdariffa)
flowers add flavour and lend a lovely red colour to cool
drinks, like the bissap or zobo of Ghana and Nigeria, and teas
throughout Africa.


A few African herbs are used primarily as seasoning, much as in
traditional European cooking. Tea-bush (Ocimum gratissimum) –
which, ironically, is not brewed as tea – and partminger (known
as curry leaf in Nigeria, O. canum) are popular members of the
Lamiaceae family. Familiar European Lamiaceae herbs include
marjoram, oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme, most of which
are also used in Nigeria. No one looks for these cousins of basil
in the market, since they can be easily grown from seed, or just
gathered as weeds. Their fresh leaves season pepper soups in
the Delta, where they also serve as pot-herbs; they add a
pungent resinous note to egusi soups in Kwara; elsewhere
they appear raw as a salad.
Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citrates) is also known as koko oba
in Yoruba, achara ehi and akwukuo in Ibo, ikonti in Efik and
myoyaka in Ibibio. It flavours tea, pepper soups and cooked
greens. Fenugreek leaves, dried, are sometimes included in
recipes for berberé paste, an Ethiopian spice mixture used in
cooking and as a condiment. The leaves of doussie (Afzelia
bella), or papao, are fermented for use as a seasoning for yams.
They are called ule ule in Ibo.
Bitter-Olubu leaf (Bitter leaf, Vernonia amygdalina) is also
known as Etidot in Cross River State of Nigeria, and Oriwo in
Benin. Elsewhere in Africa, it’s Ewuro in Yoruba; Olubu or
Onubu in Ibo. In temperate zones we tend to think of the
family Asteraceae (formerly Compositae) as consisting only of
annual or perennial herbs, but in tropical Africa Olubu leaf
grows into a -metre-tall shrub. The leaves, sold fresh or dried,
have a bittersweet quality that is apparent in the stew-like ndole
cooked in Cameroon, and adds an astringent note to the usual
egusi. It replaces hops as a bittering agent when making beer
in Nigeria. Related species used in similar fashion include
Vernonia calvoana and V. colorata. Utazi-zi (Crongronema ratifolia)
is used in Nigeria much as the various Vernonia species.

Purple basil (Ocimum basilicum ‘Spicy Globe’) can be steeped to make a
deep violet clove-scented herbal vinegar.
 Gesho (African dogwood, Rhamnus prinoides) is known as
liNyenye in Swaziland or mofifi in South Sotho. It’s blinkblaar
to speakers of Afrikaans, umGlindi in Xosa, umGilindi, uNyenye
or umHlinye in Zulu. Large branches, leaves or small branches
of gesho flavour the East African honey wine tej – each one
responsible for slightly different flavours. The amount of time
that the gesho is infused also affects the flavour – and value
– of the tej. In South Africa the plant is associated with magic;
it is believed to improve hunting, offer protection from light-
ning and prevent the forces of evil from harming crops. Khat
is sometimes added as well.
Za’atar (Origanum cyriacum) is a Middle Eastern herb that
is commonly used in Moroccan cooking and as a seasoning
in the olive oil used by Bedouins of North Africa for dipping
bread, a tradition that accompanied the spread of Islam from
the Middle East.

While the valleys of African rivers (such as the Nile and Congo)
were settled and developed agriculturally some , years ago,
little is known about their cuisine. It wasn’t until the Egyptians
developed hieroglyphics (and an urge to save infor mation
about their daily lives for future generations) that we begin
to sense a little about what their cooking might have been
like. They left no recipes or menus but their portrayals of
agricultural methods suggest a rich and varied cuisine. The
fact that they had extensive trade with their neighbours (such
as the civilizations in Mesopotamia) suggests some culinary
diversity. Egyptians were known to have used ameset (dill) and
shaw (coriander/cilantro), as well as mustard, rosemary and
wild marjoram. As Egyptian Vizier Kagemni (a. –
) once said, ‘a mouthful of herbs strengthens the heart.’
East African cuisines were formed as a result of indige-
nous cooking altered by Persian and Indian migrations. In

pre-colonial times North African foods were affected by trade
with the Berbers, Carthaginians, Ottomans and Phoenicians,
while West African food was influenced first by the Arabs and
later by European colonists. Some of the semi-liquid foods
eaten in this region are thickened with ground nuts such as
peanuts or almonds – a technique which is typical of Arabic
cooking, and was popular in Europe during the Middle Ages
and Renaissance, only to be replaced by starch-thickened
and emulsion-based sauces. Central Africa remained mostly
traditional, largely unaffected by outside stimuli. Europe and
Asia had a major effect on southern Africa and Malaysian
immigrants created a unique cuisine in the far south.
The cuisine of the Cape Malays is what used to be called
‘creole’ but is now thought of as ‘fusion’ cooking. It incorpo-
rates ideas about food from multiple cultures, from the indige-
nous Khoisan and Dutch colonists, as well as slaves (Bengalis,
East Africans and, of course, Indonesians). Typical Cape Malay
foods include bredies (meat, tomato and vegetable stews), bobotie
(curried ground meat casseroles) and sosaties (grilled kebabs).
Early Arabic geographers from the tenth century to the
sixteenth century’s Leo Africanus mentioned food in their
reports, but not much about the herbs used; they tended to
describe the agriculture of grains, production of meats and
dairy products, and sometimes vegetables. Among the vege -
tables there is mention of mulukhiyyah and baobab. The
only herb specifically mentioned was shih, which the twelfth-
century geographer Al-Idrisi believed to be wormwood. Spices,
such as clove and pepper, were already familiar when the
Arabs first visited.


 Asia and the Pacific
Herbal use is not at all homogeneous in this region. In fact the
culinary approach to herbs varies so much that a blanket geo-
graphic approach is meaningless. For example, compare China
with Vietnam, two countries in close proximity, but with
vastly different notions of the place of herbs in their cuisines.
Chinese ‘herbs’ barely exist as seasoning or salad ingredi-
ents. Chinese ingredients are often dried, and very few herbs
are used as seasoning. Spices and dried fermented products
predominate. If a fresh herb is used at all, it appears only as a
garnish (a sprig of coriander, some chopped spring onions/
scallions or flat-leaved chives). Chinese cooks rarely serve un -
cooked plant foods – perhaps because of their use of ‘night
soil’ (human waste) as fertilizer for their gardens. Likewise, raw
vegetables, meticulously carved into flowers as garnishes, are
not considered to be food, but decorations for food. Chinese
herbal medicine, generally outside the discussion in this book,
is noteworthy only because its ‘herbs’ are rarely herbs at all –
in fact, their source may not even be botanical. Among the
ingredients considered to be ‘herbs’, are minerals, dried or
preserved snakes and other members of the animal kingdom
(or parts thereof, such as rhino horn and deer antlers).
Vietnamese cooks, on the other hand, utilize large amounts
of herbs in their meals. They have a range of choices, many of
which are virtually unknown outside Vietnam, and almost all
of which are used fresh. Strong-flavoured herbs are used by
the handful at the table. Diners use cool, fresh lettuce leaves
as wrappers to contain various cooked foods, adding any
number of pungent or fragrant fresh herbs, such as basil and
cang cua, to their individual taste. The leaves of various herbs
are also suited to the Japanese love of wrapping; think of
nori or perilla as wrappers for sushi. Similarly, banana leaves

Holy basil (Ocimum sanctum), one of three basils used in Thai kitchens.

are used as wrappers for steamed rice dishes in South-east

Asia and as serving dishes in India. La lot leaves, wild betel
(Piper sarmentosum), is closely related to the betel (P. betle) that
is famously chewed in South Asia. Wild betel leaf, however,
is used as a food wrapper, a Vietnamese version of the way
grape leaves are used in the Middle East, or simply stir-fried
in bo xao la lot.
The foods of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos are classic fusion
cuisines – the local tropical diet has been repeatedly altered
by contacts from other cultures. Chinese, Indian and European
colonials have all had their influence. (Vietnamese cuisine

is especially eclectic, since it was long a colony of France –
and, no doubt, the later American presence is still affecting
Vietnamese eating habits.)
Although Chinese kitchens use few herbs, other Asian
cuisines do make use of foliage and flowers. The Japanese have
an almost religious affection for nature and their food reflects
it – garnishes remind them of the beauty and serenity of the
natural world. Garnishes are the visual equivalent of herbs used
as seasoning, where the plant provides aroma, taste and some-
times colour to enhance a dish. Basil is essential to Thai cuisine
– in fact, several different species of the Ocimum genus are
in regular use there: lime basil, O. americanum; Thai basil, O.
citriodorum; and holy basil, O. sanctum. These are in addition to
the familiar sweet basil of Western kitchens. It is also one of
the table herbs served in Vietnam.
Cumin leaves and stems – not the more familiar seeds
– are eaten fresh or used as a garnish in Vietnam. Likewise,
methi, fenugreek leaves, flavour breads in India, particularly
those baked in Gujarat. Methi is included in some curries and
masalas used in tandoori cooking. The seeds, with their dis-
tinctive maple-like scent, are a major component of curry
powder. Curry powder is not an Indian spice – it was invented
by British colonials in an attempt to recreate the masalas
(roasted spice mixtures) that are the soul of Indian ‘curries’.
The Vietnamese use of herbs at the table is unlike any-
thing in Western cuisine. Handsful of fragrant, sometimes
intensely fragrant herbs are tossed into pho (the classic noodle
soup of Vietnam), or rolled into lettuce leaves, the Asian
equivalent of burritos. Several kinds of basil might be used,
along with, or instead of, cang cua (Peperomia pellucida) – a Viet-
namese herb sometimes called ‘fish mint’ because it smells
like mint that has been used to line a fish basket. Another
‘fish mint’, giap ca (Houttuynia cordata), is sour, and smells like

Philippe de Noir (printer), title page from Le Jardin de Sante (),
engraving.

fishy coriander. It is rarely used outside Vietnamese dishes,

although there is said to be a Japanese version that smells
more like oranges. Both are rather peculiar herbs, by West-
ern standards – definitely acquired tastes for non-Vietnamese
diners. Kinh gioi (Elsholtzia ciliata) is more accessible; it’s a
lemony herb used raw or in cooked Vietnamese dishes. Per-
illa (Perilla frutescens) is also one of the raw herbs on Vietnamese
tables, where it is known as rau tio to; it tastes like coriander,
with hints of cinnamon, lemon and mint. It comes in two
basic forms, a fairly smooth green leaf and a ruffled deep red
leaf. Both are commonly used in Asian cuisines (the Japanese
use both colours in sushi and use the red form to add colour
to umeboshi, the tiny salted ‘plums’, and preserved ginger). In
Japan perilla is known as oba or shiso.

In Asia, many herbs are served as pot-herbs, sometimes braised,

as they might be in the , but also stir-fried or steamed. The

leaves of cassava (a plant usually thought of as the source of
a starchy root vegetable) are slow-cooked then puréed in the
Indonesian dish daun ubi tumbuk. Another plant not normally
thought of as a source of leafy greens is chilli – the foliage of
members of the Capsicum genus are treated as pot-herbs in
the Philippines. They don’t contain capsaicin, so are not hot-
tasting, like their fruits. Likewise, lablab (Lablab purpureus), or
hyacinth bean – grown primarily in tropical Asia, India, Indo-
nesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines for its
protein-rich seeds – also yields leaves, sprouts and greens to be
cooked as pot-herbs. Melinjo (Gnetum gnemnon) has no English
name, but the shoots and leaves of this tropical tree are treated
as pot-herbs in Malaysia and Java – especially in Java’s traditional

Perilla (Perilla frustescens var. crispa f. purpurea), a plant that can easily reseed
an entire garden.


dish Sayur Asam (a vegetable soup made sour with tamarind
paste). Another plant, better known for its seeds, but some-
times cooked like spinach, is sesame (Sesamum indicum). Its leaves
are braised in soy sauce as a topping for rice in Korea. The
stems have a mucilaginous quality that thicken soups.
The edible chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum coronarium), or
shungiku, provides leaves and flowers for Chinese and Japan-
ese soups, or as steamed pot-herbs, and as a chopped vegetable
in Korean omelettes.
Katuk (Sauropus androgynus) provides flowers, leaves and
tender tips that are staple foods in Borneo. The latter are espe-
cially prized and are grown for sale to high-end restaurants
as far away as Hawaii (where they are now being grown) and
Japan. They are served raw, or very briefly stir-fried, as ‘tropical
asparagus’ – a misnomer that attests to their culinary potential.
Katuk is indigenous to the lowland rainforests of South-east
Asia. Mitsuba or Japanese parsley (Cryptotaenia japonica, C.
canadensis) has three-part leaves – which suggest its synonym,
‘trefoil’ – and leaf stalks that are used in fried dishes, soups
and stews. The leaves and leafstalks, either fresh or blanched,
taste like a cross between celery and sorrel. Moringa’s foliage
and roots are eaten – as pot-herb and condiment, respectively
– widely across Africa, South Asia and the western islands of
the Pacific. Its young foliage is cooked like spinach – speci -
fically, chopped spinach, since the leaves are so tiny – in the
Philippines. Water spinach or kangkong (Ipomoea aquatica) is not
related to spinach at all, but is a popular substitute from Japan
and Korea all the way to Indonesia and Thailand. Usually
cooked as a pot-herb, it is also eaten raw in salads.
Asians – other than the Chinese – also make use of many
herbs in the form of salads. Water celery (Oenanthe javanica
and O. stolonifera: Japanese: ashitaba; Chinese: chin tsai, chu kuei,
shui qin, sui kan; Thai, pak chi lawm; Vietnamese: rau can), native

to Asia and Australia, is used as garnish, salad green and –
especially with older leaves – pot-herb. Water pepper (Polygonum
hydropiperoides)’s young leaves are used in raw or pickled Viet-
namese dishes, such as the kimchee-like du’a can. It tastes like
rocket (arugula), with a hint of coriander. As with some of the
pot-herbs mentioned above, some utilize parts of plants that
Europeans don’t normally consider as food. Banana flowers
are eaten in salads in South-east Asia, particularly in Laos,
Vietnam and Thailand.

While the rest of the world has often brewed herbal teas – either
as medicines or as substitutes for tea or coffee – Asians have
long had access to real tea (Camellia sinensis). When tea was
first used, on the slopes of its native Himalayas, it was part
of an energizing beverage that might have included other
herbs, fat meats (such as mutton), vegetables and even salt
and yak butter. That long list of other ingredients in brewed
tea has since been shortened (usually to sugar, milk, lemon or
honey), but some flavourings are added to the tea leaves them-
selves – such as petals of jasmine (Jasminum spp.), or chrysan -
themum (Chrysanthemum spp.), or even some of the herbal
‘teas’ already mentioned.
In Russia several herbs are used to flavour nastoika –
variously flavoured infused vodkas. One unusual nastoika
gets its characteristic vanilla-like scent from buffalo grass
(Hierchloe odorata).

Asians do use herbs in ways that are familiar to Europeans, that

is, as seasoning ingredients. The Chinese use herbs less than most
other Asians, restricting their herbal palate to coriander, spring
onions and Chinese or flat-leaved chives (Allium tuberosum).
Flat-leaved chives have a delicate garlicky aroma that lends
itself to noodles, salads, soups and meat-filled dumplings.

 Celery (Apium graveolens) is native to the temperate regions
of Europe and Asia, and was probably introduced into South-
east Asia from both directions. Oddly enough, it was never
adopted as a vegetable there (it is rarely allowed to grow into
our familiar bundles of stalks) but is used almost exclusively
as a garnish.
Elsewhere, curry leaves (Murraya koenigii), fresh or dried,
are used as a flavouring for, of all things, curries. When fresh
the leaves are pleasantly fragrant but, like many other herbs,
much of their charm is lost when dried. Curry leaves are native
to South-east Asia, Southern India and Sri Lanka. Makrut, or
Kaffir lime leaf (Citrus hystrix), tastes – not surprisingly – like
the zest of fresh limes. It is grown commercially in South-east
Asia and Hawaii. ‘Kaffir’ is an Arabic word meaning ‘foreign’,
‘unbeliever’ or ‘infidel’ – a term that reflects Indonesia’s asso-
ciation with Islam since the sixteenth century. Salam leaf, daun
salam (Eugenia polyantha) is sometimes known as Indonesian bay
leaf, though it is unrelated to true bay leaves. Leaves are har-
vested from a large tropical tree and add a flavour resembling
anise, clove and lemon to dishes in Indonesia and Suriname.
As we’ve seen, herb use in Vietnam is extensive. A few we
haven’t mentioned include Vietnamese mint, daun kesom, rau
ram (Polygonum odoratum), a fragrant herb that smells of corian-
der, eucalyptus and lemon, with suggestions of basil and mint.
Its leaves flavour curried dishes throughout South-east Asia.
Vietnamese pickled cabbage, fermented like Korean kimchee,
usually contains daun kesom. Unfortunately, ‘Vietnamese mint’
is also the name of a completely unrelated plant (rau hung cay,
a Mentha x gracilis hybrid) – yet another example of the con-
fusion caused by common names. Gardeners should also
beware of rau hung cay’s tendency to quickly overrun a garden.
This Vietnamese staple tastes like peppermint, only milder,
less assertive.

 While many Vietnamese herbs seem to be part of the
basil–mint–coriander spectrum, rice paddy herb (Limnophilia
chinensis) adds a lemon–cumin–celery flavour to Vietnamese
dishes, especially those with a sweet–sour taste. Another famil-
iar citrus-like herb is lemongrass. It is essential in Thai and Viet-
namese kitchens, where it adds the aroma of lemon zest while
providing a more delicate sourness than could be obtained
from actual lemon juice.
The Japanese, who have little land but a great deal of ocean,
harvest large amounts of a class of plants that are under-utilized
elsewhere: seaweeds. Nori (laver, Porphyra spp.) is pressed into
thin sheets and dried. It’s the familiar wrapping material in
sushi rolls. Unlike most wrappers used in other cuisines – such
as banana leaves or cornhusks – it is completely edible (the
only other edible wrappers are the young grape leaves that are

Laver (Porphyra
spp.) as prepared
sheets of nori.


stuffed in Middle Eastern kitchens). Oddly enough, laver is
a traditional foodstuff in only one other location: the Irish
and Welsh coasts of the Irish sea – where it is baked into
scone-like breads. Other seaweeds, such as wakame (a form of
kelp, Undaria pinnatifida), are treated as a vegetable in Japan.
The thick and leathery kombu (another kelp, Laminaria japon-
ica) flavours dashi, the basic broth that is to Japanese cookery
what stock is to French. Kombu is banned as a noxious weed in
England and Scotland. Wakame has been commercially raised
off the coast of France, for export, despite the fact that is
considered a highly invasive species elsewhere, such as across
the Channel in Great Britain.

The Americas
North and South America represent an amazing variety of
climates and terrains, which would have supported the evo-
lution of a vast number of indigenous species, but the fact that
they have been colonized by, or received immigrants from,
almost every culture in the world has made them incredibly
rich in culinary traditions. It also means that the range of culi-
nary herbs found there is astonishing. Many of the New World’s
plants have become staples everywhere else (beans, chillis, choc -
olate, maize, potatoes and tomatoes, to name a few), but here
we’ll consider only a few of the herbs that the hemisphere has
contributed to the world’s cuisines.
Herb use in the New World follows similar patterns as
found elsewhere (with the exception of Vietnam, as mentioned
above). Herbs serve as cooked greens (alone as a component
of soups or stews), raw salads, teas and other beverages, as
wrappers for other foods and as seasoning – providing tastes
and aromas to dishes that might otherwise be bland.

Pot-herbs and salad herbs include lambsquarters (Chenopodium
spp.), a relative of spinach whose leaves are cooked in much
the same way. The seeds, like quinoa, are eaten as pseudo-
cereals (that is, grain-like foods that are not the fruits of
grasses). C. album is native to Europe, while C. berlandieri is
indigenous to North America, where it was once a major part
of the Native American diet, from Alaska to Mexico. Both
species are found in waste places and roadsides everywhere in
the temperate zone, and as unwanted guests in gardens. In
Mexico, both species are used as pot-herbs, known, collec-
tively, as quelites. Waterleaf (Talinum triangulare or T. fruticosum),
or Surinam spinach (also cariru, Ceylon spinach, and a host of
other names), grows in Florida, Hawaii, and the tropics every-
where. It’s a major crop in Brazil. Like purslane and sorrel, it
gets it a tangy, lemony flavour from oxalic acid. It is usually
eaten as a salad herb.

Jacob Meydenbach
(printer), ‘Carrot’
(Daucus carota),
from Ortus Sanitatis,
, engraving.


Teas and infusions include maté (Ilex paraguariensis), the most
widely consumed herbal beverage in Latin America. It contains
substantial amounts of caffeine, which makes it a popular stim-
ulant. It takes its name from a drinking vessel made by Incas
from a dried gourd. There are, of course, other stimulating
beverages: coffee, naturally, and guarana (Paullinia cupana), sold
in the form of soft drinks in Brazil. Both of these are brewed
from berries, not herbs. Coca leaves (Erythroxylum coca) make
energizing teas in many Andean countries, and are actually
legal in only three: Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela.
Elderberry (Sambucus nigra) was brought to the English col-
onies in the New World, but another species (S. canadensis) was

Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis). The blossoms, called ‘blow’ in the , are
the basis of St-Germain liqueur.


already there, and still thrives in moist waste areas, especially
along rural roadsides. The leaves are toxic but the berries and
flowers are not. The flowers add a delicate floral note to heavy
syrup (called Hollunder in Germany) for use in home-made
sodas, champagne cocktails and for macerating fresh strawber-
ries. The flowers are also used in the production of the liqueur
St-Germain. Elderflower wine and cordial are very popular
in the . Elderberries used to be made into wine (they were
once known as ‘the English grape’) and jellies, and are also an
ingredient in the Italian cordial sambucca.
Linden (Tilia spp.) blossoms are European in origin and
they are the basis of sweet herbal tisanes there and in Russia,
but only in one other place: Mexico. The reason has nothing
to do with the spread of the European species (T. cordata) how-
ever; Mexico has its own indigenous linden (T. mexicana). Both
places discovered that the flowers made a pleasant tea inde-
pendently. Mexican balm (Agastache mexicana), also known as
toronjil, has an anise-like scent and makes a pleasant herbal tea.
Wild rosella’s flowers add flavour and colour to cool drinks and
herbal teas in Jamaica, where it’s called ‘sorrel’, and Mexico,
where it’s called jamaica. This use is almost identical to that of
African cooks.
Sassafras was ‘discovered’ growing on an island off the
coast of Massachussetts in  by Bartholemew Gosnold,
who brought it back to England as a tea or seasoning for soups
(which mirrors its use, as filé, in gumbos). Sassafras also lends
a delicate wintergreen flavour to root beer. Oil of winter-
green (methyl salicylate), not surprisingly, can be extracted
from wintergreen (Gaultheria spp.) itself but also from some
birches (Betula spp.). Root beer is a New World variation on
‘dandelion and burdock’ (a similar soft drink that was origi-
nally made, in England, from those named ingredients but,
like root beer, is now made almost entirely from artificial

ingredients). The leaves of wintergreen are brewed as tea
(hence another common name, tea berry) or as a source of
commercial flavourings for confectionery, chewing gum,
mouthwash, tobacco and toothpaste.

Wrapping is another use of herbs in the New World. Setting

aside tacos and burritos (or ‘wraps’, their commercial descen-
dants), since they are part of the spectrum of starch-enclosed
foods like sandwiches, dumplings and ravioli, as outside the
subject of this book, tamales are the quintessential wrapped
food from North and Central America. They are usually
thought of as being wrapped in corn-husks (or, in canned
versions, parchment paper), which is how they are made in
northern Mexico, the first Mexican cuisine to travel beyond
the Rio Grande. Immigration patterns have changed and
now regional cuisines that were little known outside Mexico
and Central America are beginning to be recognized. Banana
leaves are used, instead of corn-husks, as wrappers for tamales
in Oaxaca. Their size and shape allows the tamales to be larger
and flatter than those made in northern Mexico. In the other
direction, fresh avocado leaves (Persea americana subs. drymifolia)
serve as wrappers for smaller tamales. The leaves are also used,
fresh or dried, to add a faint hazelnut–liquorice flavour to bean
dishes, salsas and salads.

For seasoning, culantro or sawleaf herb (Eryngium foetidum) is

sometimes called Mexican coriander, because it serves as a
substitute for true coriander. Culantro is so popular in tropical
cooking that it has dozens of names from coulante (Haiti) to ngò
gai (Vietnam). Like coriander, epazote (Chenopodium ambrosioides)
is an acquired taste for those north of the border (many find its
flavour to be reminiscent of kerosene!). Epazote, either fresh
or dried, is a popular addition to beans and in some fillings

for Mexican quesadillas. Not all of those who consumed the
herb were interested in its culinary properties – many believed
it could help them rid themselves of worms or prevent flatu-
lence. On the latter subject:

Virtually every culture that consumes large amounts of

vegetables, especially gassy ones like beans or members
of the cabbage family, has offered folk remedies for the
age-old problem. They range from varying cooking tech-
niques (such as cooking in several changes of water – which
serves only to reduce the quantity of water-soluble vitamins
and minerals), to additions of herbs and spices (it is inter-
esting to note that the seasonings chosen are invariably the
culture’s favorites, anyway), to more arcane and mystical
rituals. These solutions reveal an utterly charming optimism
and trust in unverified anecdotal evidence.

Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens) is one of a dozen Lippia

species called ‘oregano’ in Mexico. It is used much as oregano
(its flavour and aroma are similar, but sharper, than those of
true oregano), but it is also brewed as té de pais or ‘country tea’
in Mexico (though it grows from Nicaragua to California). The
unrelated Mexican oregano (Poliomintha longiflora) has a bitter,
aromatic quality, reminiscent of sage and wormwood, and
was used in cooking by Native Americans who lived along the
–Mexican border. Another local herb, yerba santa (Eriodictyon
californicum), is native to northern Mexico, California and
Oregon, but now grows as far south as Brazil. It adds an anise-
like, balsamic flavor to Mexican and Tex-Mex dishes. Yerba
santa contains compounds called ‘flavanones’ that are used
in the pharmaceutical industry – not because of their thera -
peutic properties but because they mask the bitter taste of
other drugs.

 Various Allium species (the genus that includes chives,
garlic and onions) have served as seasoning almost everywhere
on the planet. North America’s native species is called ‘ramps’
(A. tricoccum). Ramps are found throughout the American Appa -
lachians. One of the earliest wild edible plants, they are the
focus of food festivals celebrated every spring, where they are
eaten as pot-herbs, as salads and as condiments to enhance
other local food favourites.

Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific

In recent years Australian wild herbs – ‘bush herbs’ – have
enjoyed a new level of popularity. They appear in restaurants
and cookbooks with increasing frequency and some have even
begun to show up in places far from the land down under. As
elsewhere, Australia’s herbs function as pot-herbs and salads,
wrappers, herbal teas and seasonings.
The region’s primary pot-herb, New Zealand spinach or
warrigal greens (Tetragonia tetragonioides or T. expansa), is native
to Argentina, Australia, Chile, Japan and New Zealand. Its
first mention in print was in the eighteenth-century journals
of Captain Cook – hence one of its other common names,
Cook’s cabbage. Cook found it useful in preventing scurvy.
The botanist Joseph Banks brought seeds back to England in
the next century. The leaves are cooked as pot-herbs, with a
preliminary blanch and rinse to reduce their sour oxalates to
a palatable level. It is grown all around East Asia but is con-
sidered an invasive weed in the Americas.
The only indigenous plant that provides leaves suitable
for wrapping food is pandan or screw pine (Pandanus spp.). It
is used all over the Pacific region, both as a wrapper for foods
and as a flavouring agent. It has a lovely scent reminiscent of

vanilla, hazelnuts and coconut, and it tints custards and rice
dishes a pale jade green.
Acacias (Acacia spp.) are common in Australia and are
often employed as herbal teas – though they have several other
culinary uses as well (for example, the flowers of mudgee
wattle, A. spectabilis, after being marinated in brandy and
battered, are deep-fried to make dessert fritters). Tannins in
the leaves add a pleasant astringency and the flowers have a
lovely violet-like scent. Their tannins provide bittering to some
beers in place of hops. Acacia seeds (especially those of wattle-
seed, A. decurrens, A. floribunda, and A. longifolia) are often roasted
to liberate flavours of chocolate, coffee and hazelnut.
Lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) is another of the Aus-
tralian ‘bush herbs’ that can be brewed as herbal tea. It is used
like lemongrass or lemon verbena despite the fact that its scent
is closer to lime than lemon.
Many bush herbs lend themselves well to use as garnishes
or seasonings. Aniseed myrtle (Backhousia anisata) tastes like
liquorice – even though it’s not related to any of the other plants
that exhibit that flavour (anise; fennel; liquorice, Glycyr rhiza
glabra; or star anise, Illicium verum). The leaves garnish desserts,
especially those containing cream or fruits, such as apricots
or pears.
Blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus), a Tasmanian tree, has a smell
similar to cajuput (Melaleuca leucadendra), which led Baron Ferdi -
nand von Müller to recommend its use as a preventative of
fever. It was taken to Algeria in the nineteenth century to
deal with fevers there, and it worked – though not for the
reasons he imagined. The trees’ root systems were so effec-
tive at extracting moisture that they effectively drained the
marshes where the fever-carrying mosquitoes bred. There
are at least fourteen eucalyptus species in Australia that have
‘peppermint’ in their common names, despite the fact that

none of them contain menthol. Their flavour is more tonic
and astringent.
Lemon aspen (Acronychia acidula)’s leaves offer a grape-
fruit–lime flavour, with less acidity than either fruit. Native
to Australia, it is found throughout the Pacific Islands and
Indonesia.
Mints are not always mint in Australia – the name is com-
monly attached to any number of non-Mentha species. River
mint (M. australis), also known as native mint, is one of seven
true mints that are indigenous to Australia. This spearmint-like
plant grows wild and – like all mints – can easily take over any
garden in which it’s planted. Native mints (Prostanthera spp.) –
not including the one mentioned above, are but more examples
of the duplication of common names – ‘native mint’ also refers,
in Australia, to many peppermint-scented species of eucalyp-
tus. Prostanthera is part of the same family as mint, Lamiaceae,
and shares some characteristics with Mentha. All of these plants
provide a minty flavour to foods prepared by Aborigines
(and others). Some native mints are: round-leaf mintbush (P.
rotundifolia), snowy mintbush (P. nivea) and Victorian christmas
bush (P. lasianthos).
Native pepper (Drimys lanceolata) serves – not surprisingly
– as pepper, but, in addition to the deep purple berries, the
leaves are also used. Native pepper is hotter than Piper nigrum,
but its heat comes on gradually. The berries colour white
sauces a pale mauve, but leaves can be used if that colour is
undesired. Native pepper is added near the end of cooking, as
its flavour dissipates with prolonged exposure to heat. Related
species include dorrigo pepper (Tasmannia stipitata) and pepper
tree (T. insipida).
Obviously, humans have valued certain flavourful weeds
from time immemorial. Not content to find them in the wild,
they’ve carefully transplanted them to herb gardens and

purposely carried them to the far corners of the globe. Weeds
themselves, not content to stay on the rocky hillsides where
they first grew, have benefited from the peripatetic nature
of Homo sapiens – sometimes as welcome fellow travellers,
sometimes as stowaways.


 4
The Sisterhood of the
Travelling Plants

Herbs have spread around the world as part of human trade and
migrations. Some moved around the Old World with human
assistance – many long before our history began to be recorded.
In some cases we only know this occurred because we can trace
the history recorded in their . For example, the lablab that
lends its name to a dish in Indonesia has long been consid-
ered indigenous to that area, but recent studies have shown
that its wild ancestors came from tropical Africa, where they
still thrive. Apparently some ancient traveller had the foresight
to carry some of the seeds along with his or her other provi-
sions. Oddly enough, this Asian staple is virtually unknown as
a foodstuff in sub-Saharan Africa, where it originated.
Richard Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of
America and the Islands Adjacent () advised travellers to take
along a copy of Wylliam Turner’s A New Herball (). A pro-
visions list, a little later (), included a few necessary spices
– cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg and pepper – but didn’t
mention herbs. Presumably such travellers would automati-
cally also bring seeds for essential herbs for planting in their
new locations.
When the pilgrims began scouting, in , for a place to
set up their new settlement, they first made a listing of useful

wild plants that were already growing there. Among them,
they noted sorrel, watercress and yarrow. John Winthrop, a
physician at Plymouth, ordered herb seeds for use there in .
He spent £ sterling – a vast sum in those days – on some
 species, including alexanders (Smyrnium olustratum), angel-
ica, borage, chervil, clary sage, hyssop, parsley, rosemary, sage
and thyme. His order also included bugloss (Echium vulgare),
dock, ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) and lamb’s lettuce
(Valerianella locusta) – which soon escaped to become common
weeds and ‘wildflowers’ in the New World.
Salem, Massachusetts, was an early scion of the nearby
pilgrim colony at Plymouth. In  the new community
requested a number of seeds, rootstocks and vines from their
masters, the Massachusetts Bay Company. Some were practical
herbs used for dyeing fabric, such as woad (Isatis tinctoria) and
madder (Rubia tinctorum), but the request for hop-roots was
clearly culinary – in England hops had replaced other bittering
herbs used in making beer in around .
Dutch settlers in New York’s Hudson Valley – like their
English neighbours – brought along their familiar kitchen
herbs: chives, marjoram, parsley, rosemary, summer savory,
tarragon and thyme. Parsley seems to have been the herb most

Otto Brunfels,
‘Wild ginger’
(Asarum
europaeum),
Herbarium Vivae
Eicones, ,
engraving.


Ibn Butlan, ‘Leeks’ (Allium porrum), from Tacuinum Sanitatis,
c. –.
used by the Dutch colonists, not just in New Netherland, but
in Africa, the Caribbean and the East Indies. Spices were much
more frequently noted in their recipes – though De Verstandige
Kock (‘The Sensible Cook’), a cookbook originally published
in  and later included in Het Vermakelijct Landleven (),
includes recipes that incorporated celery leaves and sorrel.
These were books that would have been well known among
the wealthier Dutch colonists, providing a taste of home – and
the good life – in distant colonies. One dish in De Verstandige
Kock, unusual by modern standards, called for the large leaves
of borage (or clary sage or bugloss) to be dipped in egg, then
fried and finally dusted with sugar. It was served as a side dish
for ham or other pork.
Further south, John Bartram – a Pennsylvania Quaker –
was appointed Botanizer Royal for America, in , by King
George . Bartram was responsible for sending some 

Bergamot (Monarda didyma), visited by a Silver-spotted Skipper

(Epargyreus clarus).


native plants from America to England. He discovered, and
was first to raise, two species of wild herbs: black cohosh
(Cimicifuga racemosa) and Oswego tea, a bergamot (Monarda
didyma). Linnaeus described this simple, uneducated farmer
as ‘the greatest natural botanist in the world’. Bartram’s res-
earches took him far from his home, which was then just
outside Philadelphia: south to Florida, north to Lake Ontario
and west to the Ohio River.
Bartram established the first botanical garden in the New
World. Today’s botanical gardens appear very different from
Bartram’s – their look is based on architectural and aes-
thetic notions that didn’t exist for another century (such as
those of landscape designers Frederick Law Olmsted and
Calvert Vaux). His garden was created to aid in his research.
Among the herbs he planted there were agrimony (Agrimonia
eupatoria), basil, bay leaf, borage, catnip, chamomile, chives,
comfrey (Symphytum officinale), dill, fennel, germander (Teucrium
chamaedrys), horehound, hyssop, lavender, lovage, myrtle

William Turner,
‘Mugwort’
(Artemisia
vulgaris), from
A New Herball
(), engraving.


(Myrtus communis), mints, sage, sweet flag, sweet woodruff,
tansy, tarragon, thyme and yarrow.
Asa Gray, the founder of American systematic botany,
visited the herbarium of Linnaeus in London in the s.
While there he saw American plant specimens that Bartram
had collected nearly a century earlier. Bartram’s garden still ex-
ists, on the Bartram homestead, within modern Philadelphia’s
city limits.

Weeds Will Be Weeds

Once, in a letter to fellow horticulturalist Philip Miller (
‒), Bartram complained about a number of weeds that
plagued gardeners then, as now. His rogue’s list included
chickweed, dandelion, dock, purslane, saponaria (Saponaria
officinalis) and sorrel (Oxalis spp.) – all plants that had found
their way from the Old World to the New. While the herbs
were often brought along purposely, sometimes they travelled
along on their own – they are weeds, after all.
Aside from their tendency to spread on their own, what
is it that sets ‘weeds’ apart from other plants? Sometimes it’s
their sheer fecundity. Weeds will grow anywhere, outpacing
and competing with plants we want to thrive – such as our crops
and flowers. How do they manage to outgrow our native
plants? According to the  Department of Agriculture (),
‘introduced plants are likely to invade or become noxious
since they lack co-evolved competitors and natural enemies to
control their populations’.
From an evolutionary standpoint weeds are great suc-
cess stories. The farmer’s or horticulturalist’s point of view
is somewhat less enthusiastic. The vigorous growth of these
introduced species makes them especially good at claiming

 P. A. Mattioli,
trans., Les
commentaries sur
les six livres de la
matiere medecinale
de Pedacius
Dioscuride, ,
engraving.

disturbed soils as their own. The tilled soil of domestic agri-

culture, unfortunately, is prime ‘disturbed soil’ for weeds.
Roadsides and abandoned lots are other examples of disturbed
soil and most of the plants that colonize such places are
weeds, many of which are either known Old World herbs or
plants that possess some of the desirable characteristics of
culinary herbs. The wild fennel that grows everywhere in San
Francisco is a perfect example.
Sometimes the migration of herbs had an entirely dif -
ferent destination: oblivion. As mentioned in chapter Two,
the ancient Greeks and Romans were especially fond of the
herb they called silphium. It was native to the Greek province
of Cyrenaica, in what is now northeastern Libya, but had
been driven to extinction by the first century . Today we

don’t even know what the plant was, but it must have had a
garlicky taste, since the Romans used asafoetida, Ferula foetida,
as a substitute.

From the Old to the New

Many herbs brought from the Old World naturalized them-
selves to become common weeds in the New. Our roadsides
and waste places would have looked very different before the
explorers, conquistadors, pilgrims and other colonists arrived.
Among the ones that were transported on purpose are
several herbs that served as medicines. Achillea, at least some
species, is native in much of North America, Europe and Eura-
sia, and includes iva (A. moschata) and yarrow – but they were
brought to the New World anyway, for use in treating wounds,
and have been introduced in Hawaii. Catnip, like many medi-
cinal herbs brought to the New World, soon escaped to do
some colonizing of its own, eventually covering most of
North America. Common plantain (Plantago major) is native to
Europe and North Africa – the Ancient Egyptians called it
asoeth. Young leaves are occasionally eaten as pot-herbs, but it
was brought to the  for its alleged medical properties. It was
said to be good for everything from the bites of mad dogs and
rattlesnakes, through asthma to eye problems. Native Ameri-
cans called it ‘white man’s foot’ because they found that it grew
everywhere the newcomers walked – which makes it a curse for
those who prefer their lawns to consist only of grass.
The subspecies of dandelion (T. officinale officinale) is
a European native, and is the one most commonly found
all over North America. Another subspecies (T. officinale
ceratophorum) is native to the North American continent, but
it is only found in the western states and Canadian provinces.

Dandelions were known for their supposed medicinal qualities
at least as far back as Avicenna, which is why colonists brought
them to the New World. However, its parachute-like seeds
allowed it to become one of our most common weeds and,
like plantain, an annoyance to lawn-lovers everywhere. Purslane
(Portulaca oleracea) is native to India, but is a weed virtually every-
where. It is a popular salad or pot-herb in Europe, and nearly
made it as a trendy herb in the  in the s because of its
healthy supply of vitamin  and omega- fatty acids. However,
it never really caught on. Perhaps its former use as a survival
food (it was once known as ‘miner’s lettuce’) prevented it from
earning its proper respect and glamour.
Horehound was native to England and the Mediterranean
region. Brought by early colonists as a medicinal herb, the
plant has now naturalized itself throughout the temperate
parts of Asia, Europe, North Africa and North America. Rue
is native to lands around the Mediterranean and the Canary
Islands. While the Romans loved it as a culinary herb, it was
spread more often as a medicinal plant.
Eucalypti of various species are Australian plants that have
become naturalized in warmer parts of the . Blue gum is
considered invasive in California. Swamp mahogany (E. robusta
Sm.) is found in Florida. Both species are considered to be
potentially dangerous alien plants in Hawaii.
Some plants served as both medical and culinary herbs, so
were among the first plants carried by colonists to new regions.
Saponaria, also known as soapwort or bouncing bet, is found
in every  state except for Alaska and Hawaii (Colorado lists
it as a noxious weed). It is indigenous in Europe and the Near
East, where the only culinary use we’ve found is as an emulsi -
fier in the production of halvah. Sage is certainly a well-known
culinary herb, though its species name, officinalis (and the fem -
inine equivalent, officinale) reveals its inclusion in the ancient

lists of medicinal plants. It was its supposed use in medicine
that led to it being spread to all parts of the temperate world.
Verticillate mallow (Malva verticillata) is another common
salad and pot-herb in southern Europe that was brought to
the  for medicinal purposes but has escaped and is now
a weed from Canada south to Pennsylvania and as far west
as South Dakota.
Other herbs were brought specifically for their use in the
kitchen. Bergamot travelled to the New World with European
colonists but the trip wasn’t necessary. There was already a
lovely species here: the thyme-scented lavender wild berga-
mot (Monarda fistulosa) can be seen along highways all over the
eastern  every summer. Borage originated near the eastern
Mediterranean but was spread throughout Europe in classical
times. It was mentioned by Dioscorides and Pliny and had
certainly reached Great Britain by . John Winthrop listed
it among the plants he brought to New England for use in
establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in . Cham-
omile came originally from the Azores, Northern Africa and
western Europe, but is now found in temperate areas every-
where. Chamomile and several closely related plants are used
primarily in herbal teas. It is known as manzanilla de Castilla in
Colombia, which suggests that Colombians, at least, think of
it as a Spanish herb. Chamomile has been carried to Australia,
South Asia and North America, where it has escaped cultivation
and become naturalized.
Chicory is another Mediterranean herb. It was familiar
to the Romans (Horace mentioned in one of his odes). Its
lovely blue flowers brighten the edges of highways in the
, North Africa and Australia, where they have become
thoroughly naturalized.
Coriander was well known to the ancient inhabitants of
the eastern end of the Mediterranean – it’s mentioned on

Tricoloured sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Tricolor’), in the Brooklyn Botanical
Gardens, New York.
early clay tablets from Mesopotamia. Its use spread to Europe
primarily through contact with Islam, through trade and by
migration of Moors into Spain. The Spaniards, in turn, brought
it to the New World. Cuban oregano (Plectranthus amboinicus)
is neither Cuban nor oregano – it’s closely related to coleus,
and originally grew in the East Indies; it still grows wild in
Malaysia. It has become an important herb in the West Indies,
however, and is cultivated all over South Asia. It has a strong
thyme scent that lends itself to sauces for grilled fish and goat
and Cuban black bean soup.
Dill is native to temperate Europe but has been brought
to every continent except Antarctica (though it is probably
there, dried, in spice jars). It is used in cuisines as different
as those of India, Scandinavia and Vietnam. In Vietnam it is

W. Beach,
‘Chamomile’
(Matricaria spp.),
from The American
Practice Condensed, or
the Family Physician;
Being the Scientific
System of Medicine;
on Vegetable
Principles, Designed
for all Classes
(), engraving.


Cuban oregano (Plectranthus amboinicus) is popular all over the Caribbean,
where it’s also known as country borage, Greek oregano, false oregano,
French Tobago thyme, Spanish thyme and Stygian thyme.

known as thi la, and is always used cooked (unlike most other
Vietnamese herbs). Fennel is native to Mediterranean Europe
but has spread throughout the temperate world. It thrives in
weedy lots in California’s San Francisco, which may be one of
the reasons for the city’s signature dish (no, not Rice-a-Roni):
cioppino, a local take on Marseille’s bouillabaisse. Garlic mustard
(Alliaria petiolata), a European weed, has invaded two-thirds of
the  and half of Canada, overwhelming native and garden
plants alike. Its only redeeming grace is that it makes a good,
if bitter, early season pot-herb.
Kinh gioi is native to the lower reaches of the Himalayas, but
is now found from China to Europe. It has been recognized

as a weed in the  since . The astringent lemony taste
of the leaves and seeds make it popular in Vietnamese cook-
ing. Lemongrass is native to Southern India and Sri Lanka
but is now grown in frost-free areas around the world, and
in greenhouses elsewhere. A key ingredient in the foods of
Thailand and Vietnam, it is also used in Nigerian and Greek
teas and soups, as a herbal tea in Mexico (té limon does not
contain lemons – it is flavoured only with lemongrass) and as
a commercial flavouring everywhere. It’s impossible to ima-
gine Thai cookery without it. Easily grown, it can escape to
become a garden pest in hospitable climates, so it is best grown
in containers.

William Turner,
‘Dill’ (Anethum
graveolens), from
A New Herball
(), engraving.


Rembert Dodoens, from A Niewe Herballe (), trans. Henry Lyte.
Otto Brunfels,
‘Comfrey’
(Symphytum
officinale), from
Herbarium Vivae
Eicones (),
engraving.

Marijuana, originally from Central Asia, has been natural -

ized – to the dismay of law-enforcement officials – almost
everywhere. In the  five states (Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri,
Pennsylvania and West Virginia) have prohibited it as a noxious
weed but all states ban its intentional planting. The earliest
written reference to it is Chinese; it was listed in Shen Nung’s
Pharmacopoeia in  .
Mints, native to the Mediterranean region, have been
carried all over the world, and become a nuisance to unwitting
gardeners who thought they might make a pleasant addition
to their gardens. They soon discover that its stolons spread the
plant so rapidly that it is almost impossible to eradicate. Mints

 J. Pillehotte Lyon,
‘Marijuana’
(Cannabis sativa),
from Histoire des
Drogues (),
engraving.

are found as weeds in moist areas near human habitations, or

places that, long ago, were inhabited by imprudent gardeners.
Mitsuba, or Japanese parsley, is native to Asia but it has
become naturalized in Hawaii. Mustards are indigenous to
Asia but were spread across Europe in ancient times, and later
to the New World and islands of the Pacific. Mustard serves as
herb and a spice virtually everywhere since it thrives in almost
any disturbed soil, easily becoming weedy, and requires prac-
tically no attention from gardeners – except trying to keep it
from taking over. Before spice trade routes to Asia were estab-
lished and the discovery of the Americas, mustards (and related
horseradish) provided Europe’s only ‘hot’ spices.
Perilla, introduced from China and South-east Asia, is
now a pernicious weed in the eastern  and Ontario. This

annual is often planted for its ruffled crimson foliage but
its prolific self-seeding soon takes over any garden. Pur-
slane, native to Iran, has been cultivated in Southern Europe
and is now a cosmopolitan weed throughout North Africa,
the Americas, Asia and Australia. In Arizona it is listed as a
prohibited noxious weed.
Queen Anne’s lace is a familiar roadside weed that has
been introduced to the  from Europe. This progenitor of
all domestic carrots is found in most American states and
sub-Arctic Canadian provinces (it’s considered a noxious
weed in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Washington). Rosemary,
according to some accounts, was introduced to England in

Variegated mint (Mentha x gracilis ‘Variegata’) at Clermont Historic Garden,

Germantown, New York.


the fourteenth century as a gift to Queen Philippa, wife of
Edward , but it was probably already there, since Romans
had occupied the island long before.
Sorrel is native to the temperate regions of Europe and
Asia but it has escaped from gardens to grow wild – where it
is a welcome early spring green. Stinging nettles, another early
spring green, came from Northern Europe, but have been
naturalized as weeds in waste places throughout the north -
eastern two-thirds of the  and many other temperate areas
of the world. Adult plants are obnoxious but young ones
provide tasty spring pot-herbs. Tansy, useful as an old-fashioned
bittering agent for home-brewed beers, is native to Asia and
Europe, but has been introduced and naturalized throughout
North America.
Water spinach has been introduced into the  from its
native East Asia. Unfortunately, it has succeeded all too well

William Turner,
‘Purslane’ (Portulaca
oleracea), from A
New Herball (),
engraving.


Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota). The seeds of this common roadside
weed have a warm taste, similar to the seeds of caraway.

– and is now listed as a ‘noxious weed’ in Florida and Texas.

Watercress, originally a European plant, has been introduced
to temperate regions around the world. It’s another aquatic
weed found in every  state except Alaska, Hawaii and North
Dakota, and in all of Canada south of Alaska. In Connecticut
it is banned as an invasive species.
Wormwood and mugwort are both native to Europe and
North ern Asia but have been introduced into the .
Southernwood is indigenous to the Mediterranean region
but was introduced to North America by . Worm-
wood is considered a weed in most of the states north of

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgarum ‘Crispum’), thriving in a garden in Stamford,
Connecticut.

Oklahoma, and a noxious weed in Colorado, North Dakota

and Washington. Mugwort is now found in most of eastern and
far western North America and is listed as ‘an invasive exotic
pest’ in Tennessee.
The last category of travelling herbs includes one that
hitched a ride on its own. Beggar ticks (Bidens pilosa), or Span-
ish needle, may be a foodstuff in many parts of the world, but

is an introduced weed in much of the  and Canada. It is
reviled for exactly the same reason it got there – its seeds cling
to anything that brushes against the plant and have to be
forcibly removed.

Other Directions
Naturally, not all herbs travelled westward from the eastern
hemisphere; many went along on the return trip and others

Apuleius
Platonicus,
‘Mugwort’
(Artemisia
vulgaris),
Herbarium
Apuleii Platonici,
, engraving.


travelled from one part of the Old World to another – some
by invitation, and still others came as welcome guests, only to
become unwanted weeds.
Most of the weeds used as herbs in Great Britain and
Europe have been there for so many centuries that they’re
treated as if they were indigenous. There are a number of
invasive plants that have been imported, intentionally or
otherwise, from the New World, Asia and Australia, but most
of them have no culinary uses. The only exceptions are some
edible seaweeds (mentioned elsewhere).
Plants that were carried intentionally to the Old World
include angelica, which came originally from Scandinavia
and northeastern Asia, but had been naturalized in the rest
of Europe by the sixteenth century. Bananas (Musa spp.) are
native to Africa but seventeenth-century Spanish and Portu-
guese traders brought them to Asia and tropical parts of the
Americas. The flowers are eaten in India, Sri Lanka and the
countries of South-east Asia. The leaves are used as plates in
India and as wrappers for steamed or baked foods in several
places. The local tamales in Oaxaca, Mexico are wrapped in
banana leaves; they are also filled with mole poblano – a rich
braised mixture of chillis, chocolate, raisins, nuts and turkey (or
chicken) – or rajas (strips of roasted poblano chiles) and cheese.
Basil was originally a wild plant in tropical Asia but it
was already familiar to the Ancient Greeks, who called it ókimon.
It is now grown around the world. Plus, in Africa, there’s
partminger (Ocimum canum) and, in South America, Peruvian
basil (O. micranthum). Moringa (Moringa ssp.) – at least its early
ancestors – originated in Africa and some thirteen species are
still eaten there. Ancient Egyptians used one species (M.
pterygosperma) medicinally. However, the genus diversified both
naturally and through domestication in India, becoming
M. oleifera in the Himalayan foothills.

 Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is indigenous to Brazil’s rain-
forests, but had already spread as a cultivated crop all over
South and Central America and the Caribbean by the time the
Portuguese and Spanish arrived in the early sixteenth century.
The Portuguese brought it to West Africa and on to South
and South-east Asia, and Spanish ships carried it to the Phil-
ippines. Europeans were primarily interested in the starchy
roots, which give us our tapioca, as a source of calories for
colonial labourers, but the natives themselves also made use of
the leaves. Oddly enough, the Indonesian name for this pot-
herb is daun Perancis, which translates to ‘French leaf ’. The term
is not historically or botanically accurate but it does acknow-
ledge that cassava is foreign, even after it has been growing in
Indonesia for  years.
Edible chysanthemums are, like most chrysanthemums,
native to Europe and western Asia but are only considered to
be a foodstuff in eastern Asia (China, Japan, Korea and the
Philippines). Lemon verbena is native to South America (Arg-
entina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay).
The Spanish carried it home in the early seventeenth century,
calling it hierba luisa. It has since been spread to frost-free areas
(and greenhouses) around the world. Another edible flower
species, marigolds (Tagetes spp.), are New World plants from
temperate regions of South America. Once carried back to
Europe by seventeenth-century Spaniards, they now have
worldwide distribution. In frost-free regions they naturalize.
The flowers add colour and a slight liquorice flavor to herbal
teas, rice dishes and some soups and stews, but all parts of the
plant can be used. Tagetes oil is a commercial flavouring. Yet
another culinary flower is roselle, which is native to southern
Asia, from India east to Malaysia. The red calyxes have been
prized in Africa longer than historical records have been kept
and Africa still exports most of the world’s supply. Roselle

arrived in the western hemisphere, possibly as a result of the
slave trade, before the seventeenth century. Its use has since
spread throughout South and Central America, north to Mex-
ico and the Caribbean and west to Hawaii and the Philippines.
It has been grown sporadically in Florida but since even the
slightest frost kills it it must be treated as an annual.
Papayas (Carica papaya) are native to tropical Central Amer-
ica but are now grown in similar climates around the world.
Generally, the fruits are the desired part of the plant, but in
Indonesia the greens and flowers are steamed as pot-herbs
(the flowers are less bitter than the leaves). The normally dis-
carded seeds have a delightful peppery quality that suggest
that they would be good in a salad or as a garnish.
Tea, which is indigenous to the cool lower slopes of the
Himalayan mountains, travelled in ancient times to China and
on to Japan. In most of the places to which tea was exported
only the dried leaves were taken; seeds went only to Japan and
the South Asian regions that could grow the little bushes.
Europeans first heard of tea from sixteenth-century travel
accounts (oddly enough, Marco Polo never mentioned Chin-
ese tea drinking), notably those of Jan Hugo van Linschooten,
a Dutch citizen who first visited India, on a Portuguese ship,
in . Shortly thereafter the Portuguese were banned from
the Indian ports and seven years later the Dutch East India
Company was formed to control the area and its trade. Five
years later the company brought tea to Java, and to Holland for
the first time in . Most tea continued to be shipped from
China and, some time later, it began to be drunk in England.
Samuel Pepys, in his diary entry for  September , wrote,
‘I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink), of which I never
had drank before.’ It was the first beverage he mentioned that
was not alcoholic (before tea and coffee, beer was the safest way
to drink water, because boiling was part of the beer-making

process). Thomas Twining opened a tea shop in London in
 but tea did not become really popular in England until
after , when the newly formed East India Company began
bringing regular shipments from Canton. By  the company
was importing , tons per year.
Plants that were carried intentionally from the New World
but became naturalized – sometimes becoming invasive and
unwanted pests – include cang cua (Peperomia pellucida), native to
northern South America, naturalized in Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana and Texas – and South-east Asia (it’s
popular in Vietnam). Culantro (Eryngium foetidum) was originally
a plant of tropical Central America. It’s now a weed known as
spiritweed in Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the
Virgin Islands. It also thrives in Africa, South America and
South-east Asia. Around the Caribbean it has names like culantro
de burro, culantro de cimarron, culantro de coyote, culantro de montana
and culantro del monte – names which are sometimes applied to
another species (Peperomia acuminata). The various ‘culantros’
and ‘cilantro’ (coriander) sound similar because they are used
in similar ways. Each of these three species can be found
around the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Several different
cultures occupy that relatively small area but they have all
been touched by Spanish conquest and colonialism. The
Spanish had learned to use coriander from the Moors and
brought their taste for the herb to the New World, even though
the original plant did not always thrive in the tropical climate.
No doubt they applied the name of their familiar plant to
other species that could be substituted as they moved from
place to place.
Epazote originated in tropical regions of the Americas
but has now spread to temperate regions everywhere; it is
found in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Quebec in eastern Canada,
as well as every  state except Alaska, Minnesota, Montana,

‘Marjoram’ (Origanum majorana), from the Arabic version of Dioscorides’
De Materia Medica.
North Dakota and Wyoming. In most of these places it is
considered invasive. By the eighteenth century it was being
brewed as tea in Germany, where it was known as jesuitentee,
karthäusertee and, expressing the obvious, mexicanisches teekraut.
Marjoram first grew in northern Africa and western Asia
but was already a familiar herb for the ancient Greeks and
Romans. It was introduced into the New World but – other
than a single unsubstantiated reference to it being a common
weed in New York’s Catskills – it seems to exist as a naturalized
species only in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
As these peripatetic plants found new homes in distant
countries – with or without our intentional assistance – they
altered the cooking habits of the people who lived there, and
their recipes.


 5
The Herbal Melting Pot

When cultures first encounter each other they invariably

exchange ingredients and cooking techniques. People have
been moving around and taking their notions about food
with them for as long as they have been people. While the
encounter may be colonial in nature (hence economically
and politically advantageous to only one of the cultures) each
is made richer – at least in the culinary sense. Who could
imagine the food of Italy without the New World’s tomatoes,
or Thai dishes without Europe’s basil, or Indian food without
hot peppers from South America? While some xenophobes
strive to preserve ‘authentic’ regional dishes, their efforts are,
ultimately, futile. All food is fusion food.
Often immigrants bring along their own food traditions
and ingredients (or at least seeds). Generally, these newcom-
ers are not welcomed warmly into their new communities
and their foods are dismissed as weird, unpalatable, not fit
for human consumption (by which they mean not fit for
their own consumption). The immigrant’s foods are used as
markers that define the newly arrived social or ethnic group
as somehow less than human. Ironically, the infusion of new
ingredients and techniques from abroad almost always makes
the food of the new country more interesting.

 The same can often be said of wars. In fact, the broaden-
ing of the culinary arts may be the only lasting benefit that
military actions provide to both victors and vanquished.
Soldiers (and sailors) are invariably placed in unfamiliar places
and contexts and they don’t get all of their sustenance from
their rations. They are exposed to people who eat very differ-
ent foods from their own. When they return to their home-
lands they bring newly acquired tastes with them. Participants
in, and resisters of, the Vietnam War (as well as their Second
World War-era parents) provide good examples of the positive
effect of conflict upon cuisine.
At home, in the s, non-combatant baby boomers were
involved in an exploration of (among other things) many differ -
ent ethnic cuisines. Interest in Indian religion and philosophy
led to an interest in Indian cooking. Anti-war identification
with the peoples of South-east Asia led to an exploration of their
cuisines (in an odd parallel to that being done by the servicemen
in the same area).
After the Vietnam War ended many Vietnamese moved to
the . Like many ethnic groups before them, they opened
restaurants selling the foods they knew from ‘the old country’
in the new one. As is always the case when cuisines relocate
in new areas, cooks must make adjustments: ingredients
and/or cooking techniques have to be modified to suit new
conditions. So, while Vietnamese tables always included large
amounts of fresh herbs to be added, as condiments, by each
diner, sorrel (Rumex scutatus) – an unfamiliar European herb
– became part of the mix. There was no word for it in Viet-
namese, so they just called it rau chua (meaning ‘sour herb’) or
rau thom (‘fresh herb’).
Vietnamese coffee (iced, as ca phe sua da, or warm as ca phe
sura nong) is another example of a ‘fusion’ recipe that is con-
sidered to be an ‘authentic’ regional speciality. Coffee originally

grew in Ethiopia. Since Islamic law forbids consumption of
alcohol, coffee became the social beverage of choice among
Muslims in the fifteenth century (the word ‘coffee’ is derived
from the Arabic word for wine: qahwah). Within a century its
use spread to all of Europe and on to European colonies in
the New World. As it could not be grown in temperate climates
the plants were smuggled to many other tropical locations (our
slang term ‘java’ is a reflection of coffee’s expanded range). As
an expensive import, Europeans (especially the French, who
had a limited colonial presence in the coffee-growing locations
of the time) looked around for ways to maximize the small
amount of coffee they could afford. They did it by adulter-
ating it with the dried and roasted roots of a common wild
herb that grew at home: chicory. That French preference is still
felt in former French colonies, such as Louisiana and, later, in
what came to be known as French Indochina. Today, the
Vietnamese (especially expatriates, who adapt to whatever is
available in their new countries) may be the second largest
producers of coffee in the world, but many still prefer their
coffee combined with chicory – neither plant indigenous in
their country.
The war in South-east Asia also led to changes in Aus-
tralian food. Today, in Melbourne, one can find such atypical
‘Australian’ dishes as banana blossom salad with shredded
pork. This is because Laotian refugees from the conflicts
brought a taste for that dish with them when they left for
a new, safer, homeland. One might also ask how Laotians
even knew about an African plant like bananas. Banana flow-
ers are a ‘traditional Laotian ingredient’ because Portuguese
ships brought them from Africa’s western coast in the early
seventeenth century.
The post-Second World War period engendered a larger
migration of people and jobs, in all directions, than in any other

period in history – the Allies learned that their neighbours and
co-workers could be from anywhere. This meant that people
from, for example, New England, got to taste barbecue and
the precursors of Tex-Mex cuisine for the first time. The Eng-
lish, French and Italians were exposed to American dishes.
American soldiers brought home their newly acquired taste
for pizza (with the result that dried oregano became an
American staple).
In addition the post-Second World War period saw an
immense surge in world travel. When the war ended factories
that had been producing tanks and bombers switched to cars
and commercial aeroplanes. To encourage people to buy and
use their new cars, better highways was built in America and
Europe, and people began visiting places they had only heard
of before – and, while they were on the road, they ate. They
tried hitherto unknown foods and started to think that these
regional foods were somehow part of a larger cuisine. In Italy
a notion evolved that was totally unfamiliar: Italian food (most
Italians still think of dishes from the next village as foreign food).
Relatively low-cost flights took people to places where they
were exposed to ingredients and flavours they had never
known before. The middle-class parents of the hippies and
soldiers were discovering ‘world cuisine’ on their vacations and
at home on the new  cooking shows. Restaurants became
entertainment and, in order to grab the ‘audience’s’ attention,
had to look for more and more exotic foodstuffs. Herbs and
spices offered excitement at a relatively low cost.
None of this was really new, of course. Human history
has been one long series of exchanges and incorporation of
formerly foreign foodstuffs by people who could never have
predicted such culinary miscegenation. Eventually, after resist-
ing the expected corruption of cultural purity, even the most
hidebound traditionalists find themselves adopting part of

the foreigners’ food ways, making them their own. They don’t
even realize that dishes they consider to be ‘ethnic’ have actu-
ally been invented in their own country. In the  dishes like
chilli con carne, spaghetti and meatballs and corned beef and
cabbage are not foreign at all. They are ‘as American as apple
pie’, despite the fact that apple pie itself is not an American
invention. British ‘curries’ are, likewise, not Indian at all – they
are purely English, even if they make use of spices that never
grew in the .
Pho, the national dish of Vietnam, is a classic fusion food.
The Vietnamese didn’t really eat beef (as in India, cattle were
too valuable as work animals to be eaten) until the French
occupied their country in the mid-nineteenth century. The rice
noodles and ginger reflect Chinese influences on Vietnamese
cooking that are older. Fresh chillies, obviously, are New World
contributions – probably first brought by the Portuguese in
the early seventeenth century. The fresh herbs, however, tossed
in at the last moment at the whim of the eager soon-to-be
slurper, are purely Vietnamese.
Fusion cooking is neither new nor unusual, it is the essen-
tial means by which cuisines grow and change, and it has always
been so. During the s and early ’s exposure to a host
of formerly unfamiliar world cuisines led to some remark-
able changes in the Euro-American diet. Coriander provides
a perfect example of this sort of culinary change.

The Coriander Complex

The seeds of this plant, originally native to the Mediterranean
region, have been a staple in European kitchens for thou-
sands of years, and naturally travelled with Europeans to all
their far-flung colonies. They were used in baked goods and

in pickles and not much else. In the mid-s some recipes,
especially those in Chinese cookbooks for Western cooks,
began mentioning something called ‘Chinese parsley’, usually
accompanied by a note advising home cooks to ‘substitute
parsley’ – a sign that consumers had trouble finding this rare
ingredient in ordinary supermarkets.
Anyone who had actually tasted ‘Chinese parsley’ would
have known that regular parsley was a completely inadequate
substitution. However, most Euro-American cooks would
not have known the difference back then. Within a decade, all
that had changed. ‘Chinese parsley’ had become ‘coriander’
(‘cilantro’) and had become an accepted item in Western
kitchens – though there were still some ‘gourmets’ who
complained that the herb tasted ‘soapy’. There may still be
people who feel that way, but the herb is so widely accepted
that few people voice that opinion any more.
What caused the change? A widespread exposure to new
cuisines, for one thing. Changes in regulations and ease of
travel led to a sudden increase in the number of Chinese
emigrating to Western countries, with the result that Chinese
restaurants began serving something much more akin to the
food in China than the typical ‘Chinese’ fare that had been
common since the s. Suddenly, non-Chinese diners knew
that there was something beyond the so-called ‘Cantonese’
dishes to which they had become accustomed. They began
seeking spots that served ‘Mandarin’ and ‘Szechuan’ dishes.
Today, we would call them ‘Beijing’ or ‘Sichuan’, but we also
know about the styles of Fukien, Hunan and other regional
Chinese cooking styles.
Along with changes in Chinese immigration, wars in
South-east Asia and Africa led to more arrivals from Thailand,
Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Indonesia in the ; Algeria
and Morocco in Europe (especially France, as both countries

are francophone). Economic opportunities, legal and other-
wise, brought thousands of new people from Mexico and
Central America to the . Island people from the Caribbean
migrated to the  and Europe (French-speaking Haitians to
France, English-speaking West Indians to the  and Great
Britain). Many technically trained Indians came to work in the

Johann Schott, ‘Rosemary’ (Rosmarinus officinalis), from Von Dem Nutzen der
Dinge (), engraving. Note that this rosemary ‘bush’ is not planted in
the ground – perhaps because, in the frigid North (where the book was
written), plants indigenous to sunnier climates were moved to sheltered
spots in winter.


exploding computer industry, then found that running food
stores or restaurants for their compatriots provided a more
stable income than the ever-fluctuating high-tech job market.
All of these groups knew coriander and used it routinely in
their cooking.
Western cooks noticed. Changes in lifestyles (a term that
didn’t really exist before that time), disposable incomes, levels
of education, travel and entertainment media, and a thorough
mixing of cultures led to an explosion of interest in what used
to be called ‘gourmet’ cooking. Few people use the term
‘gourmet’ any more, since today’s everyday cooking is more
sophisticated than the ‘gourmet’ cooking of the past.
Coriander could be considered the poster child for all
these culturally induced culinary changes. Guacamole and
salsa have largely replaced the sour-cream-onion-soupmix
dips that were so common a few decades ago. The frozen food
aisles of our markets are filled with ready-to-heat meals that
would have been impossibly exotic not very long ago: Ecuado-
rian, Indian, Mexican, Pakistani, Thai and Indonesian dishes
compete for shelf space with frozen pot pies and  dinners.
Today, coriander is as common as parsley in the grocery por-
tion of our supermarkets – and no one would even think of
substituting one for the other.

Herbs have been with us since before we had agriculture.

Regions whose histories have been punctuated by repeated
invasions, migrations and colonization have culinary histories
that reflect all of those influences. Herbs went along with us,
and have changed us, for the most part, more than we have
changed them. We are still learning about, and from, these
fellow-travellers. A little book like this can only touch on such
a large topic, so make use of the resources that follow, in the
endmatter, to find out more about these savoury weeds.

 Recipes

Herbal Teas
Technically, only tea (Camellia sinensis) is brewed to make the bever-
age of the same name. All the so-called ‘herbal teas’ are infusions
called ‘tisanes’. They can be mild, delicate brews made from chamo-
mile or robust quaffs flavoured with fresh rosemary and lemon.
The process is simplicity itself: pour boiling water over the
herb of choice, steep until desired strength is achieved, strain and
serve. Some of the stronger tasting herbs (rosemary, thyme, mint,
bergamot) benefit from a bit of honey.

Other Herbal Beverages

While we have seen that many herbs have been used in brewing
beers and complex cordials, they make relatively few appearances
in cocktails. Cocktails themselves are a fairly modern invention.
There were, of course, punches and syllabubs and similar alcoholic
quaffs – but they were always made in large quantities and served
by the glass to guests, who all drank the same drink.
The mixtures of spirits with other flavourings (such as fruit
juices, sodas of various kinds and garnishes where appropriate),
made to order, generally one serving at a time, reflect a greater egali -
tarianism, individual preferences superseding a style of drinking
determined by the host ahead of time. The art of making cocktails

really blossomed in the s – which, not coincidentally, was
shortly after alcohol was banned in Iceland (), Norway (),
in parts of Canada (–) and of course in the  by the eigh-
teenth amendment to the Constitution and subsequent Volstead
Act (). Nothing creates a greater demand for individuality
than the imposition of unpopular restrictions on freedom of
choice. The cocktail is a perfect example of spontaneous rebel-
lion against authority and a celebration of what was once called
‘flaming youth’. Among the now-classic cocktails that made their
debuts in the period are Cuba libres and daiquiris (), Bloody
Marys () and mimosas ().
Possibly because of the very newness of cocktails there is
little tradition of using fresh herbs in their formulation. One notable
exception is mint, which figures prominently in two famous cock-
tails, both of which pre-date the great flowering of cocktails in the
s: the mint julep (first mentioned in print in ) and the
mojito (a nineteenth-century drink based on much older – seven-
teenth-century – concoctions). At the time of writing there is a
resurgence of interest in cocktails and young mixologists are
beginning to experiment with all sorts of new approaches to the
bartender’s art (such as making flavoured syrups and infused
juices). We can expect to see much more in the way of fresh herbs
among the traditional mixers and garnishes in the near future.


 Blackberry-Rosemary Kir

When combined with bubbly, this syrup makes a surprising herbal

variation on a kir royale.

 cups ( g) fresh blackberries

¼ cup ( g) sugar
⅓ cup ( ml) water
½ tablespoons fresh rosemary, finely chopped
 bottle dry champagne or prosecco
 orange slices, for garnish

Reserve the six best-looking berries. Combine the remaining berries,

sugar, water and rosemary in a small non-reactive saucepan. Simmer
for  minutes or until slightly thickened. Filter, without pressing,
through a fine-mesh strainer. Set aside until cooled.
Divide between six champagne flutes, drop a berry in each, top
with the champagne or prosecco, place an orange slice on each
glass and serve.

Makes enough for  cocktails


 Elderberry Blossom Syrup

This fragrant syrup can be used in cocktails, added to prosecco

or mixed with seltzer for a refreshing non-alcoholic quaff. Pour it
over sliced fresh strawberries and allow the flavours to develop
for at least half an hour before serving.

 elderflower heads, collected before noon

 lemon, sliced
 teaspoons Ball Fruit Fresh (see note)
 kg (½ lb) white sugar
 ml ( quart +  cup) boiling water

Trim flowers of all stems, and pick over to discard insects, leaves
or other debris. Place in a large bowl with sugar, lemon and Ball
Fruit Fresh. Pour boiling water over the dry ingredients. Stir until
the sugar has dissolved. Cover with plastic wrap. Stir twice a day
for five days.
Strain though a bouillon strainer and/or through a moistened
clean cloth napkin. Fill sterile bottles or canning jars. Refrigerate
or, if using canning jars, seal and process in a canner for  minutes.

Note: Ball Fruit Fresh is a mixture of ascorbic acid (vitamin ) and

citric acid, used to prevent browning due to oxidation and preserve
the colour of fresh fruits and vegetables when cut.

Makes about  pints


 Additional Herbal Recipes
Cucumber-Shiso Pickles

This is typical of Japanese pickled (but unfermented) vegetable

dishes, collectively known as sunomono – cool and refreshing, they
can be used as a light appetizer or to accompany rice or noodles.

½ cup ( ml) unseasoned rice wine vinegar

 tablespoons mirin
¼ cup ( g) sugar
 tablespoon sea salt
 cup ( g) cucumbers, thinly sliced
 cup ( g) daikon (Japanese radish) or young red radishes,
thinly sliced
 red perilla leaves

Make a marinade of the first four ingredients in a non-reactive bowl.

Stir until all solids are dissolved. Slice the perilla into fine shreds
(like a basil chiffonade). Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive
bowl, cover and refrigerate overnight.
Serve pickles ice cold.

Makes  cups, or approximately  g


 Michigan Corn Chowder

We had this soup in a small roadside cafe near Lake Michigan and
not far from the Indiana border. It’s light yet satisfying, very
flavourful, not at all heavy handed with the cream and so impres-
sive that we asked our server about the recipe. Unfortunately she
told us that the chef ‘never tells anyone what he does in his
kitchen’, so this is merely an attempt to recreate it. The secret, of
course, is the subtle and unexpected tang of lemongrass.

 ml ( quart) good chicken stock

 stalk fresh lemongrass, chopped
 ears fresh corn
 sweet red pepper, seeded and chopped to size of corn kernels
 small onion chopped to size of corn kernels
salt and pepper to taste
 teaspoon Italian parsley, chopped
 tablespoon double (heavy) cream

Combine lemongrass and stock, simmer for  minutes (until the

stock is well flavoured). Strain the stock and reserve, discarding
the lemongrass.
Cut kernels from cobs, then scrape the cobs with edge of knife
to extract all the milky fluid from the base of the kernels. Add corn,
red pepper and onions to stock; simmer until vegetables are tender.
Add cream and parsley, adjust seasoning and serve.

Serves 


 Roasted Loin of Pork with Za’atar and
Caramelized Garlic

This roast comes to the table with a gleaming, nearly black, glaze.
The interior of the pork, however, is juicy and elegantly white by
contrast. The amount of caramelized garlic may seem too much
for four to six people but poaching in sherry removes most of the
garlic’s unpleasant sulphur compounds and the final browning
renders them sweet and silken, almost unctuous.

 tablespoons pomegranate molasses (see notes)

 tablespoons honey
 tablespoon olive oil (not extra virgin)
½ teaspoon za’atar, crumbled (see notes)
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
 clove garlic, mashed to a paste
 large heads of garlic, separated into cloves, but not peeled
.–. kg (– lb) boneless loin of pork
 cup ( ml) dry sherry

Combine the first six ingredients in a large non-reactive bowl (or

resealable plastic bag large enough to hold the pork loin) to make
the marinade. Spread the marinade over the pork loin, making
sure all sides are covered. Marinate eight hours (or overnight) in
refrigerator, turning three or four times in the marinade.
Preheat oven to º/º. Rub a little olive oil in a roasting
pan, add the pork loin and roast for  to  minutes, basting fre-
quently. When the internal temperature reaches º/º, remove
from the oven, cover with aluminum foil (the temperature will
continue to rise to a safe º/º, and the meat will neither dry
out nor shrink). It should rest, covered in a warm place, for about
 minutes – just enough time to prepare the caramelized garlic.
When the roast comes out of the oven, bring the sherry to
a boil in a small saucepan. Poach the garlic cloves in sherry for 
minutes. Drain them, discarding the sherry. Peel the cloves (cutting

off the blunt stem end with a paring knife should allow the skins
to slip right off). Sauté the drained, dried garlic cloves in the olive oil,
tossing frequently until evenly golden brown and deeply fragrant.
Serve as a garnish with slices of the roast.

Notes: Pomegranate molasses is not molasses at all, but an astringent

reduction of tart pomegranate juice. It can be found in markets that
carry Middle Eastern products. There’s no real substitute but
tamarind extract is an approximation.
Za’atar is a generic name for a number of Middle Eastern herbs
(Origanum cyriacum, Thymus capitatus and Thymbra spicata, among
others). Its flavour and aroma are reminiscent of thyme, oregano
and marjoram, and a mixture of two or more of these would make
an adequate substitute. However, be careful not to substitute zathar,
which is a spice mixture usually containing thyme and sumac, and
sometimes sesame and other ingredients.

Serves four to six, generously


 Basil-scented Strawberries

Very familiar fruits, like strawberries, can be enhanced by a little

unexpected edge (such as the now-classic addition of black pep-
per). In this recipe the subtle clove–anise taste of fresh basil adds
an almost tropical mystique to a family favourite.

 ml ( cup) water

 g ( cup) sugar
 g (¼ cup) fresh basil leaves, chopped
 pints ( g) fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
 perfect basil leaves, whole

Combine water and sugar in sauce pot, heat until all sugar is dis-
solved. Remove from heat. Add chopped basil, stir, then set aside
to cool.
When completely cooled, strain syrup through cheesecloth
(or a chinoise) to remove all particles of spent basil. Pour over
strawberries and place in refrigerator, covered, for at least an
hour to allow flavours to merge.
Divide the berries into four portions, garnish with reserved
whole basil leaves and serve.

Serves 


 Rosemary Shortbread

 g (½ cup) cornmeal
 g (½ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
 g (½ cup) sugar
 tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
 rounded teaspoon salt
½ tablespoons dark honey (such as buckwheat or loosestrife)
 g ( sticks) ice cold, unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

Preheat oven to º /º.

Briefly pulse cornmeal, flour, sugar, rosemary and salt in the
bowl of a food processor until combined. Add butter and honey
and pulse until mixture forms crumbs and just begins to come
together (don’t process too much, or gluten will develop in the
dough, resulting in a tough chewy product).
Press dough with the side of your thumb into an ungreased
-cm (-inch)-square baking pan. Prick dough all over with a fork.
Bake for  to  minutes until golden brown.
Partly cool on a wire rack – but cut into desired shapes before
it’s completely cooled, or it will shatter.

Makes one -inch shortbread


 Thyme-scented Fruit Salad

 tablespoons almond oil

 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
 tablespoon honey
 lemon, juice and zest
 teaspoon white wine vinegar
salt and freshly cracked black pepper
½ honeydew melon, deseeded and cut into balls
½ cantaloupe, deseeded and cut into balls
 cups ( g) red seedless grapes

Combine oil, thyme leaves, honey, lemon zest and juice, and vine-
gar in a small bowl. Whisk until the ingredients are well-mixed.
Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
Toss fruits with dressing and serve.

Makes ‒ cups


 Raw Tomato Sauce

For  g/ lb cooked pasta

This is an ideal summer dish – made when tomatoes are most
flavourful, and a sauce that doesn’t require long cooking is most
appreciated!

 ml (¼ cup) good fruity olive oil

 small shallot, peeled and minced
 tablespoon fresh tarragon leaves, chopped (plus a sprig for
garnish)
 g ( lb) ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Combine first four ingredients (except garnish) in a non-reactive

bowl, cover and allow flavours to meld, at least an hour. Purée the
sauce (in blender or through a food mill). Taste and adjust season-
ing with salt and pepper.
Toss with cooked pasta, garnish with sprig of tarragon and
serve.

Serves 


 References

Introduction
 Susan Weingarten, ‘Wild Foods in the Talmud: The
Influence of Religious Restrictions on Consumption’, in
Wild Food: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and
Cookery  (Devon, ), pp. –.
 Gary Allen, The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Urbana, , ),
p. .

1 What, Exactly, are Herbs?

 Gary Allen, The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Urbana, , ), p. .

2 The Usual Suspects

 Jean Bottéro, The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in
Mesopotamia (Chicago, , ), p. .
 Ibid.
 Stephen Bertman, Handbook of Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
(New York, ), pp. –.
 Bottéro, The Oldest Cuisine in the World, pp. , .
 Paul Freedman, ed., Food: The History of Taste (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, , ), p. .

  Pliny the Elder, Natural History, book , chapter , ed.
John Bostock and H. T. Riley (London, ).
 Agnes Robertson Arber, Herbals, their Origin and Evolution
(Cambridge, ), pp. –.
 Ibid., pp. –, –.
 Ibid., p. .
 Ibid., pp. –.
 Quoted by Alice Ross, in ‘Sallets’, available at www.
journalofantiques.com, accessed March .
 Nicholas Culpeper, ‘Original Epistle to the Reader’, in
Complete Herbal (), available at www.bibliomania.com,
accessed March .
 Debs Cook, ‘The Royal Herb Strewer’, available at http://
herbsociety.org.uk, accessed March .
 Pliny, Natural History, Book , chap. .
 Ibid., Book , chap. .
 Ibid., Book , chap. .
 Ibid., Book , chap. .
 Ibid., Book , chap. .
 Ibid., Book , chap. .
 Ibid., Book , chap. .
 Culpeper, ‘Garden Bazil, or Sweet Bazil’, in Complete
Herbal.
 Ibid., ‘The Bay Tree’, ‘Sweet Marjoram’, ‘Winter and
Summer Savoury’.
 Ibid., ‘Mint’.
 Ibid., ‘Mustard’.
 Ibid., ‘Thyme’.
 Ibid., ‘Dill’.
 Ibid., ‘Cives’.
 Ibid., ‘Water Cresses’.
 Pliny, Natural History, Book , chap. .
 Culpepper, ‘Angelica’, in Complete Herbal.
 Richard LeStrange, A History of Herbal Plants (New York,
), p. .
 Lise Manniche, An American Egyptian Herbal (London,
), p. .

 Craig Claiborne, An Herb and Spice Cook Book (New York,
), p. .
 Alexander and Zhenia Fleisher, ‘Identification of Biblical
Hyssop and Origin of the Traditional Use of Oregano-
group Herbs in the Mediterranean Region’, Economic Botany,
 (), pp. –.
 Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys (New York and
London, ), p. .
 Pliny, Natural History, Book , chap. .
 Culpeper, ‘Borage and Bugloss’, in Complete Herbal.
 Pliny, Natural History, Book , chap. .
 Ibid., Book , chap. .
 Note that the Latin of the Middle Ages was neither classic,
nor that of modern science.
 Quoted in Laura L. Howes, Chaucer’s Gardens and the
Language of Convention (Gainesville, , ), p. .
 Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals (London
and New York, ), p. .

3 A Less Eurocentric Herbarium

 National Research Council, Lost Crops of Africa, vol. :
Vegetables (Washington, , ), p. , accessed March .
 Haroun Hallack, personal communication. Hallack worked
as an extension agent in Sierra Leone, and now teaches
sustainable agricultural practices at Redbud Farm in
Berkeley County, West Virginia.
 National Research Council, Lost Crops of Africa, vol. :
Vegetables, p. .
 Diana Buja, ‘African Honey Wine Recipes, ’, at
http://dianbuja.wordpress.com, accessed  October .
 ‘Food: Bread, Beer, and All Good Things’, available at
www.reshafim.org.il, accessed March .
 Tadeuz Lewicki, West African Food in the Middle Ages
(Cambridge, ), pp. , , .
 Ibid.

  Gary Allen, The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Urbana, , ),
p. .
 Richard LeStrange, A History of Herbal Plants (New York,
), p. .

4 The Sisterhood of the Travelling Plants

 Richard Hakluyt et al., Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of
America and the Islands Adjacent (London, ), p. .
 ‘Emigrant Ship Provisions List ’, available at www.
pilgrimhall.org, accessed March .
 Donna R. Barnes and Peter G. Rose, Matters of Taste: Food
and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life (Syracuse,
, ), p. ; Peter G. Rose, Food, Drink and Celebrations
of the Hudson Valley Dutch (Charleston, , and London,
) and Matters of Taste: Dutch Recipes with an American
Connection (Syracuse, , ).
 John Custis, The Letterbook of John Custis IV of Williamsburg,
– (Lanham, MD, ), pp. –.
 Donald Culross Peattie, Green Laurels: The Lives and
Achievements of the Great Naturalists (New York, ), p. .
 One specimen he discovered in the mountains of Georgia
(Franklinia alatamaha), named for his friend Benjamin
Franklin, has never been found again in the wild. Every
living specimen is descended from the cuttings he propa-
gated.
 Joseph Kastner, A Species of Eternity (New York, ), p. .
  Department of Agriculture, ‘Invasive and Noxious Weeds’,
available at http://plants.usda.gov, accessed March .
 Richard LeStrange, A History of Herbal Plants (New York,
), p. .
 Ibid., p. .
 Ibid., p. .
 Ibid., p. .
 National Research Council, Lost Crops of Africa, vol. :
Vegetables (Washington, , ), pp. –.

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
 Websites and Associations

Botanical research
Arnold Arboretum
www.arboretum.harvard.edu

Botany Libraries/Gray Herbarium Libraries/Economic Botany

www.huh.harvard.edu

Ethnobotany.com
www.ethnobotany.com

Fernwood Botanic Garden

www.fernwoodbotanical.org

Herb Research News

www.herbs.org

New York Botanical Garden

www.nybg.org


 Herb history
Las Hierbas de Cocina
http://mexconnect.com

Latin Wordlist of Assorted Herbs, Spices, Plants &

Miscellaneous Foodstuffs
www.chebucto.ns.ca

Ps. Apuleius, Herbal, England, St Augustine’s abbey,

Canterbury; c. –
www.bodley.ox.ac.uk

Ps. Apuleius, Dioscorides, Herbals (extracts); De virtutibus

bestiarum in arte medicinae, in Latin and English, England,
Bury St Edmunds; th century
www.bodley.ox.ac.uk

University of Florida Herbarium Library

www.flmnh.ufl.edu

Societies and associations

American Botanical Council
www.herbalgram.org

American Herb Association

www.ahaherb.com

American Herbalists Guild

www.americanherbalistsguild.com

Arizona Herb Association

www.azherb.org


 Canadian Herb Society
www.herbsociety.ca

Herb Society
www.herbsociety.co.uk

Herb Society of America

www.herbsociety.org

Herb Society of Central Florida

www.floridaplants.com

Herb Society of Southwestern Virginia

http://dir.gardenweb.com

International Herb Association

www.iherb.org

Massachusetts Horticultural Society

www.masshort.org

Resources for herb enthusiasts

Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages
www-ang.kfunigraz.ac.at

Herb Companion
www.herbcompanion.com

Herb Quarterly
www.herbquarterly.com

Kräuterlexikon
www.heilkraeuter.de


 Seeds
Herbs Australia
www.screamingseeds.com.au

Native American Seed

www.seedsource.com

Native Seeds
www.nativeseeds.org


 Acknowledgements

A book like this is the product of the expertise and support of many
people. They deserve all the credit for its strengths – the blame for
its weaknesses I reserve for myself.
I have to thank former colleagues at The Culinary Institute
of America, whose collective culinary experience and generosity
of spirit always exceeded even my greediest expectations – espe-
cially Bob Delgrosso, Steven Kolpan, Krishnendu Ray, Konstantin
Sembos and Jonathan Zearfoss.
A book like this would have been impossible without the assist-
ance of libraries and I spent many happy hours in The Conrad
Hilton Library of The Culinary Institute of America, The Massa-
chusetts Horticultural Society Library, The Sojourner Truth Library
of the State University of New York College at New Paltz and The
New York Public Library. I took most of the photos at The
Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, The Chicago Botanical Gardens, the
herb garden at of The Culinary Institute of America, The Phantom
Gardener in Rhinebeck, New York, and the Robison York State
Herb Garden at Cornell University.
I am indebted for the generous contributions of Ken Albala, Di-
ana Buja, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Rachel Laudan, Jacqueline New-
man, Andrew Smith, Paula Wolfert, Clifford Wright and numerous
members of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, who
never failed to provide answers when I couldn’t find them myself.
Deborah Begley and Tamara Watson not only plied me with
great food and wine, but delivered them with wit and intelligence.

 So many others should be listed here that – had they been
included a second volume would have been required. Nonetheless,
I would be a fool if I did not acknowledge the contributions of my
wife, Karen, whose support and wry humour, tempered by wholly
justified scepticism – not to mention her willingness to try, once, what-
ever weird things appeared on our table – made this book possible.


 Photo Acknowledgements

The author and the publishers wish to express their thanks to

the below sources of illustrative material and/or permission to
reproduce it:

Gary Allen: pp. , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , ,  , , , ; Istockphoto: p.  (Lezh);
Rex Features: p.  (Roger-Viollet); Werner Forman Archive: p. 
(Oriental Collection, State University Library, Leiden).


 Index

italic numbers refer to illustrations; bold to recipes

absinthe , , ,  basil , , , –, , ,
Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets , , , –, , ,
,  , 
agave  holy 
Agriculture et maison rustique  purple 
Al-Idrisi  Bauhin, Gaspard 
Alexandra Hicks Herb Knot bay leaf , , 
Garden  Beach, W. 
Alhambra  bergamot , –, , ,
American Practice Condensed… , 
 Boccaccio , 
Anleitung  Bock, Jerome 
Antony House  Boleyn, Anne 
Anzac Square  Botanicum Medicinale 
Apicius , ,  Bottéro, Jean 
Apuleius Platonicus , , , Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
, ,  , 
Aristotle  Brunfels, Otto , , , 
Artemisia , , , , , , Brunschwig, Hieronymus 
, ,  bush herbs –
Butlan, Ibn 
Babylon, ancient  Buttes, Henry 
Bacon, Francis 
Banks, Joseph  Capitulare de villis vel curtis
Bartram, John – imperialibus 

carrot , ,  digestifs 
catnip , –, , ,  dill , , , , , , ,
Cato  , , , 
chamomile , , , , Dioscorides –, , , ,
, , , 
Charlemagne – Dispensatorium 
chives , , , , , , , Divers Voyages Touching the
, ,  Discovery of America… 
cilantro see coriander Doctrine of Signatures , ,
Claiborne, Craig  
Clermont ,  Dodoens, Rembert , 
Cleveland Botanical Garden Dutch East India Company
 
Columella, Lucius Junius Dyet’s Dry Dinner 
Moderatus , 
comfrey , ,  East India Company 
Cook, James  Edward  
Cordus, Valerius ,  efo 
coriander , , , , , , Egenolph (printer) 
–, , , , , , , egusi , 
–, , , , – Egypt, Egyptians –, –,
Cornell University ,  , , , , , , ,
Country Housewife’s Garden, The 
 elderberry , –, 
Crüydeboeck  Elizabeth  
Cuban oregano ,  English Physitian, The , , 
Culinary Institute of America, Epicurus 
The  Estienne, Charles 
Culpeper, Nicholas , , , Evelyn, John , 
, , –, –, ,
–,  fermentation , , –, ,

De Agri Cultura  Fleisher, Alexander and
De Noir, Philippe  Zhenia 
De Re Coquinaria –, ,  Forrest, Isabelle 
De Re Rustica ,  Fuchs, Leonhart –, , ,
Decameron ,  

Galen  Hernandez, Francisco 
Gart der Gesundheit –, , , Het Vermakelijct Landleven 
 Hildegard, Abbess of
George  ,  Rupertsburg 
Gerard, John , , ,  Hippocrates , , , 
Gosnold, Bartholemew  Histoire des Drogues 
Grand Herbier, Le  Historia Plantarum , 
Gray, Asa  Historia Plantarum Universalis
Greece, Greeks , –, 
–, , , , ,  Historia Stirpium, De , , ,
Grete Herball, The  
Homer 
Hakluyt, Richard  hops , , , , , 
Hatfield House  Horace , 
Henry   horehound , , –, ,
Henry  ,  , 
hepatica , ,  Hortus Sanitatis 
herb gardens , , , , ,
–, , , , , , , Jardin de Sante, Le 

Herb Sallad for the Tavern Bowl, knot gardens , , 
An  Knowle 
Herbal  Kreuter Büch 
herbal teas , , , , ,
–, , , ,  lavender , , , , –,
Herball  , 
Herball, or Generall Historie of laver , –
Plants, The , ,  Lawson, William 
Herbarium , , , ,  leeks 
Herbarium Apuleii Platonici , Leo Africanus 
,  Les commentaries sur les six
Herbarium Vivae Eicones , , livres… , 
,  Liber de Arte Distillandi 
Herbarius  Liber Ruralium Commodorum 
Herbarius Latinus  Linnaeus –, , –
Herbarius Moguntinus  Long Barn 
Herbarius zu Tetsch  Lucius Apuleius of Madaura 

Lyon, J. Pillehotte  Ortus Sanitatis 
Lyte, Henry ,  oxalis , 

Magnus, Albertus  Palladius 

mandrake ,  Paradisi in Sole, Pardisus
marigolds ,  Terrestris 
marijuana , ,  Parkinson, John 
marjoram , , , , , Pedanius Dioscorides 
, ,  Pepys, Samuel , 
Massachusetts Bay Company perilla , , , , 
,  Perkin, William Henry 
Materia Medica, De , , , Pflanzenbuch 
, , ,  Pharmacopoeia 
Mattioli, P. A. ,  plantain , –
Mesopotamia , ,  Pliny the Elder , , ,
Meydenbach, Jacob  –, –, , , ,
mint , , , , –, , –, 
–, , –, , –, Polo, Marco 
–, –, , , – Pomona Hall 
spearmint  Pseudo-Apuleius 
variegated  purslane , , , , ,
Mithekos  , 
mugwort , , , –,
 Queen Anne’s Lace , , 
quelites , , 
nasturtium , –, –
Natural History ,  Red Lodge Museum 
Ndole  Rerum Medicarum 
New Herball, A , , , , Rerum Rusticarum 
,  rhizotomists 
Nieuwer Herbaris, Der  Rohde, Eleanour Sinclair 
Nieve Herball  Rome, and Romans , , ,
Niewe Herballe, A  , –, , , , ,
Novum Organum  –, , 
rosemary –, , , , ,
Olmsted, Frederick Law  , , , , , , , ,
Opus Agriculturae  , , , , 

rue , , , , , , , , Van Linschooten, Jan Hugo
,  
Varro 
Sackville-West, Vita – Vaux, Calvert 
sage , , , , , , , , Verstandige Kock, De 
, –, , , , , violet 
,  Virgil 
clary ,  Von Dem Nutzen der Dinge 
purple 
tricoloured  wild ginger , , 
Schinz, Salomon  Winthrop, John , 
Schoeffer, Peter ,  wormwood , , , , ,
Schott, Johann  , 
Sheldrake, Timothy 
Shen Nung  za'atar , , ‒
Sissinghurst 
Smith, Sidney 
St Fagans 
St Gall , 
Sunomono 

Tacuinum Sanitatis 

Taibei (Taiwan) 
tansy , , , , , 
taxonomy –, 
tej 
Theophrastus –, , ,

thistle 
thyme , , , , 
tisanes , , –, 
Toklas, Alice B. 
Tragus, Hieronymous 
Turner, William (Wylliam) ,
, , , , 
Tusser, Thomas 
Twining, Thomas 
