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Herbs, Drying and Storing for Winter Use
Gather the herbs on a dry day. They are at their greatest perfection just before they begin to flower. Cleanse them immediately, cut off the roots, divide them into small bunches, and dry them in a Dutch oven before the fire, or lay them on dishes in a moderate oven. If this is not convenient, they may be divided into bunches, and laid on sheets of paper in the sun, but the more quickly they are dried the better will be their flavour. Care must be taken that they do not burn. When dry, it is usual to tie the herbs in paper bags, and keep them hanging in a dry place until wanted, but it is much the better plan to pick off the leaves, pound them in a mortar, pass them through a sieve, and put the powder into bottles, which must be kept closely corked. The different herbs should be gathered and dried in the following months:-- BASIL. The middle of August. BURNET. June, July, and August. CHERVIL. May, June, and July. ELDER FLOWER. May, June, and July. FENNEL. May, June, and July. KNOTTED MARJORAM. July. MINT. The latter end of June and July. PARSLEY. May, June, and July. SAGE. August and September. SAVOURY, SUMMER. The latter end of July and August. SAVOURY, WINTER. End of July and August. TARRAGON. June, July, and August. THYME. End of July and August. THYME, LEMON. End of July and August. THYME, ORANGE. June and July.
A method rather than a dish, and the one place it needs correcting is the oven. Everything else holds up remarkably well.
- "A moderate oven" is far too hotBy the usual nineteenth-century reckoning a moderate oven is somewhere around 350F, though this book gives no temperatures; at anything near that heat leafy herbs cook and scorch rather than dry, and much of the volatile oil that carries the flavour is driven off. Modern practice is the lowest setting the oven will hold, 100-125F, with the door propped ajar, or a dehydrator; drying may take a few hours or much longer depending on the herb.
- The Dutch oven meant hereNot the lidded cast-iron pot. A Victorian Dutch oven was an open-fronted tin screen set before the hearth, which reflected radiant heat onto its contents. The nearest modern equivalent for this purpose is simply a warm, well-ventilated spot -- an airing cupboard or the residual heat of an oven just switched off.
- Gather before floweringThis is the single instruction to keep. Essential oil content in the leaf is generally highest just before bloom and falls once the plant puts its energy into flowers.
- Wash sparingly"Cleanse them immediately" is sound in principle, but wet leaves mould in the bunch. Rinse only if genuinely dirty, then spin or blot thoroughly dry before the herbs go near heat.
- Knotted marjoram and burnetKnotted marjoram is sweet marjoram, Origanum majorana, milder and sweeter than the oregano sold as marjoram in some shops. Burnet is salad burnet, a cucumber-scented leaf now rare in kitchens; it loses almost all its character on drying and is better used fresh.
- Elder flowerOnly the flowers. Elder leaves, bark, stems and unripe berries contain cyanogenic compounds and are not food; strip the blossom from the green stalks before drying.
- Herbs that do not dry wellParsley, chervil and tarragon lose most of what makes them worth having. Freezing them chopped in oil or water gives a far better result than any drying method.
- Powder or leafThe recommendation to pound and sieve into corked bottles gives a convenient seasoning powder, but ground herbs stale within a few months. Storing whole dried leaves in airtight jars away from light, and crumbling them at the moment of use, keeps the flavour a year.
- The months are EnglishThe calendar assumes southern England. Gauge by the plant, not the date: cut when the flower buds have formed but not opened.
Cassell's is describing the ordinary annual rhythm of a nineteenth-century English kitchen garden, where the household's whole winter supply of seasoning had to be laid in during a few weeks of high summer. Dried herbs could be bought from grocers and druggists, though a household with a garden had obvious reason to prefer its own. The preference stated here for pounded, sieved powder in corked bottles over the older habit of paper bags hung from a beam sits alongside a broader Victorian taste for sealed and labelled stores. The list of months is essentially a gardener's table transplanted into a cookbook, and its contents show what an English kitchen expected to have: thyme in four varieties, two savouries, sage and mint, and hardly anything that would now be called a spice.