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Preserved Parsley for Winter Use
Tie some fresh-washed parsley in bunches, having first carefully picked it over, put it in a saucepan of boiling water with a little salt and boil for three or four minutes; then place on a sieve to drain. Dry it slowly in front of a brisk fire, and when sufficiently so to almost crumble, put it. into bottles. When the parsley is required for use, soak it in warm water for two or three minutes. Although not equal to fresh parsley, it answers very well when the other cannot be procured.
A blanch-and-dry method for putting up parsley before year-round fresh herbs existed. The technique still works; only the heat source needs translating.
- The hinge: dry it completelyParsley that is merely leathery will mould in a sealed bottle within weeks. It must be brittle enough to crumble between your fingers, as the original says, before it goes into a jar.
- "In front of a brisk fire"This means the hearth-side of a coal or wood fire: gentle warmth with steady air movement, not oven heat. A dehydrator at its lowest herb setting, or an oven at its lowest setting with the door propped, gives the same result in 1-3 hours; a warm airy room takes a day or two.
- Blanching timeThree or four minutes is longer than needed for leaves this thin. Thirty to sixty seconds sets the colour; beyond that you lose flavour into the water. The salt in the blanching water does nothing for preservation here and can be left out.
- Shock itThe original drains the parsley straight onto a sieve. Plunging it into ice water first stops the cooking and keeps the green brighter; drain and pat it thoroughly dry before it goes to the heat.
- "Bottles"Period bottles were corked or glass-stoppered. Use a clean dry screw-top jar, keep it dark and cool, and check after a week for any condensation on the glass -- that means it went in damp and should be re-dried or discarded.
- YieldA large bunch of fresh parsley, perhaps 4 oz, reduces to a few tablespoons of dried. Expect roughly a tenfold loss in volume.
- RehydratingThe two- or three-minute soak in warm water suits the leaf-and-stem sprigs this recipe produces. If you crumble it to flakes, add it directly to soups and sauces instead and give it a few minutes of simmering.
Oscar Tschirky's kitchen ran on parsley -- as garnish, in fines herbes, in the green sauces and cold dressings that filled a hotel menu -- and in a New York winter before refrigerated rail freight and year-round greenhouse herbs, a reliable supply was not a given. Blanching before drying appears in some nineteenth-century household manuals, though many simply direct that herbs be hung or dried in bunches; the effect, in modern terms, is that brief boiling arrests the enzymes that turn dried herbs to hay-coloured dust, so the parsley keeps something of its green and its scent -- though Oscar himself offers no reason. The candour of the last sentence is characteristic of the book, which was written for professional and ambitious domestic cooks alike and does not oversell a substitute. Note also the phrase "in front of a brisk fire": the drying heat may well have been whatever the kitchen range was already producing, rather than a separate operation.