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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Herbs
To Dry Herbs.-Herbs should be gathered in dry weather, carefully picked over and dried as quickly as possible, either in a slow oven or under a hotbed sash. They should be spread out thin on sheets of blotting paper and turned occasionally. Fresh herbs are, of course, to be preferred, but as they are not obtainable in winter it is necessary to preserve them by drying.
The season at which herbs are best fit to be preserved by drying varies with different species. Orange flowers, elder flowers, parsley and chervil in May, June, and July; burnet and tarragon in June, July, and August; knotted marjoram and mint in July; summer savory, July and August; basil, winter savory, and lemon thyme, the end of July and August.
The aromatic herbs must not be exposed to too great heat, as otherwise the essential oils which give them their flavor will be volatilized. After being dried, the herbs should be screened through a large sieve to remove dust and other impurities, the stems removed, and the leaves stored in glass bottles. All of the above herbs will be found useful condiments in cookery, and several of them have medicinal qualities. These and many others can also be obtained of druggists and other dealers. To Gather Roots. - Most medicinal and other roots should be gathered in the spring and are, as a rule, better in the fresh than in the dry state. To dry them it is only necessary to brush off the dust with a dry brush, rinse the roots in cold water, string them together and expose them to the heat of the sun or in a slow oven until bone dry.
A drying procedure rather than a dish, but the principles hold: the whole point is to remove water fast enough to prevent mould while keeping the volatile oils that carry the flavour.
- The hinge: low heatThe warning about volatilizing the essential oils is the crux. Period "slow ovens" are usually reckoned at roughly 250-300F, though this book never defines the term; either way it is far too hot for leaves. Aim for 95-115F, which in practice means a dehydrator, an oven set to its lowest setting with the door propped, or simply moving air in a warm shaded room.
- Hotbed sashA glazed frame over a manure-heated garden bed, giving gentle warmth and glass cover. The nearest modern equivalent is a screened rack in an airy attic, not a sunny windowsill, where light bleaches the leaves.
- Blotting paperAbsorbent and unsized, it would have wicked moisture from the undersides of the leaves. Mesh screens or a cake rack lined with cheesecloth work better, since air reaches both sides.
- When to cutMost of the leaf herbs in the month-by-month list fall at or just before flowering, which is generally held to be when leaf oils are strongest; note that the orange and elder entries are for the flowers, not the leaves. Cut in the morning after the dew has dried and before the sun is high, and skip the washing if you can; wet leaves dry slowly and darken.
- Burnet, knotted marjoram, savorySalad burnet is a cucumber-flavoured perennial rarely sold today. Knotted marjoram is sweet marjoram, and winter savory is the woodier, sharper cousin of the summer sort. All three are garden plants more easily grown than bought.
- Testing and storingLeaves are done when they crumble rather than fold, and stems snap. Strip the leaves whole into glass jars and crush only when cooking; ground herbs lose their aroma within months, while whole dried leaves keep usable flavour for about a year in a dark cupboard.
- Sweating in the jarFor the first week check the jars daily. Any condensation on the glass means residual moisture, and the batch needs to go back out to dry or it will mould.
- "Obtained of druggists"When this book was written the pharmacy was still a normal source of culinary herbs and seeds, as the text itself says. That trade has moved to grocers and spice merchants, and pharmacy-grade botanicals are no longer sold with cooking in mind.
- The roots paragraphSound advice for horseradish, lovage or angelica from your own garden. Do not extend it to foraged "medicinal" roots; several common wild umbellifers with edible-looking roots are lethal, and identification from a nineteenth-century plant name is not reliable.
Household Discoveries belongs to the last generation of American home manuals written for houses that still had a kitchen garden and no reliable winter supply of fresh green flavourings. Drying was the cheap, universal answer, and the calendar of gathering months given here echoes the sort of guidance long familiar from English herbals and gardening books, though the line of transmission is not documented. The entry sits in the pickling section because herbs, vinegar and preserving belonged to one household department: the work of carrying summer produce through to spring. The passing note that several herbs "have medicinal qualities" and can be had from druggists reflects a period when the boundary between the spice shelf and the medicine chest was still thin, and dried herbs could be bought from the druggist.