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Soups, Herb-Powder for Flavouring
As it is not always possible to obtain fresh herbs, the cook will find it a convenience to have the following herbs powdered, stored, and ready to use in flavouring. For this purpose the recipe for the AROMATIC SEASONING OF HERBS AND SPICES will also be found useful; but those who object to the flavour of spices, and prefer that of herbs only, will find that the following recipe will suit them best. The herbs should be procured fresh, dried in a warm but not too hot oven, pounded in a mortar, and passed through a wire sieve. The powder should then be put into small bottles, stoppered closely, and kept in a dry place. It will retain its flavour for several months. The proportions are as follows:--Two ounces of sweet marjoram, two ounces of winter savory, two ounces of dried parsley, two ounces of lemon-thyme, a quarter of an ounce of bay-leaves, a quarter of an ounce of celery-seeds, an ounce of sweet basil, and an ounce of lemon-peel.
A dry herb blend for seasoning soups and stocks, built on four bulk herbs with smaller accents. The one thing that decides whether it is worth making is the drying: too much heat drives off the volatile oils and you are left with green dust.
- Dry low, not warm-ish"A warm but not too hot oven" gives no temperature, but it clearly means gentle heat: the lowest setting your oven offers, door propped, or a dehydrator on its herb setting. Leaves should turn brittle without browning; scorching gives the batch a hay-like taste.
- Are the weights fresh or dried?The text is genuinely ambiguous. Two ounces each of four dried herbs is a large quantity of powder, so the weights are most likely taken after drying; if you weigh fresh, expect roughly a quarter to a fifth of that in finished herb. Weigh dried and you will get a blend that matches the stated balance.
- Lemon-peelPare only the coloured zest with no white pith, dry it until it snaps, then pound it. Pith turns bitter and will not powder properly.
- Bay and celery-seedA quarter ounce of dried bay is a sizeable handful of leaves, and they are the hardest thing in the mortar; break them small first or they will refuse to pass the sieve. Celery seed is already dry as bought and needs no oven time.
- Winter savory and lemon-thymeBoth are still grown but rarely stocked dried. Summer savory is the usual substitute for winter savory, slightly milder; ordinary thyme plus a little extra dried lemon zest stands in for lemon-thyme.
- GrindingA mortar gives a coarser, more fragrant powder than a blade grinder, which heats the herbs. If you use a grinder, pulse in short bursts and sieve out the stalk fragments, which are woody and will not powder.
- Yield and useAbout 10 ounces of powder, which is a great deal for one household. A quarter to a half teaspoon seasons a quart of soup; add it in the last ten minutes, since dried herb powder gives up its flavour quickly and then fades.
- StorageSmall tightly stoppered jars, filled to the top and kept dark, are the point of the instruction: headspace and light are what cost you the aroma. The book's "several months" is fair; treat six months as the outside edge.
Composite dry seasonings like this sit between the older English "bundle of sweet herbs" tied for the stockpot and the commercial mixed herbs of the twentieth century. Cassell's places it under the principles of soup-making, and one might guess that a Victorian kitchen made stock more or less continuously, so that a jar of powder let a cook season in January with the marjoram and savory of the previous summer. The recipe is also a domestic cousin of the French times \pices compos>