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Herbs for Winter
In preparing herbs for winter use they should be gathered when fresh. Mint, thyme, summer savory, etc., should be washed and well picked, then put in a cool oven and dried very slowly. Put the leaves and tops in a wide-mouthed bottle; when needed rub and sift. Keep from the air, as exposure will cause them to lose strength.
A preserving method rather than a dish, and one that still works exactly as written. The only things that need translating are the oven and the storage vessel.
- "A cool oven"In a coal or wood range this meant the falling, residual heat left after baking, with no way to measure it; the temperature would have varied a good deal from kitchen to kitchen. On a modern oven, use the lowest setting with the door propped open on a wooden spoon, or a dehydrator at 95-115F. Higher temperatures drive off the volatile oils that carry the flavour.
- Gather at the right moment"fresh" here means before the plant flowers, cut in the morning once the dew has lifted but before the sun is high. This is the usual advice on the grounds that leaf oil is at its best before the plant puts its energy into blossom.
- Wash sparingly, dry thoroughlyIf the herbs are clean, skip the wash entirely. If they must be rinsed, spin or blot them until no surface water remains; residual moisture is the chief cause of mould in a stoppered jar.
- Slowly is the hingeFast heat scorches the leaf and dulls the flavour. The herb is done when a leaf crumbles between the fingers and the stem snaps rather than bends; at these low temperatures that may take anywhere from a few hours to overnight, depending on the thickness of the leaf. Thyme and savory dry quickly; mint takes longer.
- Store whole, crush at the last minuteThe instruction to "rub and sift when needed" is not fussiness. Whole leaves hold their oils far longer than crushed ones. Rub between the palms straight into the pot.
- The wide-mouthed bottleAny jar with a tight lid works, but keep it dark or in a closed cupboard, since light degrades colour and flavour as air does. Glass canning jars are ideal; the wide mouth makes it easy to get whole leaves and tops in and out without breaking them up.
- Check the jar after a weekIf any condensation appears on the inside of the glass, the herbs were not fully dry. Return them to low heat immediately rather than risk the whole jar.
- Shelf lifeExpect about a year for leafy herbs stored whole and sealed. Dried herbs are roughly three times as strong as fresh by volume, so a tablespoon of fresh mint becomes a teaspoon of dried.
Drying herbs by the residual heat of the oven was a standard domestic method in kitchens built around a range that stayed warm for hours after the fire went out. The plants named here are the workhorses of the Anglo-American soup pot and stuffing bowl: summer savory for beans, thyme for stocks and forcemeats, mint for lamb and for the sauce. A cook working from a larder of this period had no year-round supply of fresh green things, so the winter pot was seasoned from whatever had been put by in summer. The warning about exposure to air reflects an accurate, if unexplained, observation about volatile oils.