The Good Herbs of the Middle Ages

Since a large majority of the population didn't have access to spices (except pepper maybe) in the Middle Ages, "housewives" had to do with the growth of their gardens, to season all those porries and cabbage and lentil soups.

Whether the small and delicate leaves of marjoram, or the feathery and powerfully aromatic leaves of southernwood, or the dentate and peppery leaves of rue, the aromatic herbs used in the Middle Ages were, above all, characterized by a pungent flavour, a necessity, actually, to successfully season a pot of cabbage.

Aromatic Herbs

Surprisingly, the recipes are essentially about parsley. It isn't so much about sprinkling a touch of parsley leaves with a light hand on a dish of meat, than about cooking parsley soups with an egg and stock added, about purées with parsley and other herbs, and about green omelettes or arboulastes (herbolace pies).

The gardens were full of herbs that were to be cut without being pulled out. Thus were several varieties of celery, preferably perennial, gathered or cultivated. Apium or wild celery and lovage, grew their large leaves into jagged clumps within the gardens. The wrinkling of the leaves would issue a rich and powerful scent.

Southernwood which was known for its healing properties for gunpowder burns, is a small shrub with feathery leaves. Platearius also wrote about lavender cotton. The scent of this bush, mostly found in cemeteries, is so violent, that one can only wonder how it can be eaten.

Tansies are among the tall plants that grow spontaneously over and over again, year after year, without any particular care. When rubbed with the hands, the jagged leaves, whether flat or shrivelled, will give off this particularly vigorous and unpleasant odour. Tansies were eaten though, mixed in fritter, in the Middle Ages, before being limited, later on, to a unique use, as vermifuge medicine.

Surprisingly, only few herbs of the Medieval cookery came from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, while nowadays, the famous mixed "herbes de Provence" are often the only ones used. If marjoram and oregano were indeed cultivated, in the manner rare flowers can be, wild thyme was never used, for instance. Savory was somewhat prized for its aphrodisiac repute, but frost resistant hyssop, with its erect blue scapes, and sage, forwarded by its Latin name salvia, meaning "that saves", were the favourites in that range of spices.

Green Herbs

But aromas were far from being the only advantages found in modest garden plants. The staple diet of the peasantry was known to be unbalanced, lacking vitamins and proteins. These deficiencies were partially compensated by the green herbs and the vitamins they provided. Thus oxalis, at the beginning of spring, the hardest time of the year for the farmers, when the grain supplies were low or even spoilt by the cold season. These early greens, which started to grow as soon as the weather became milder, were a fortunate complement to a monotonous diet, bringing along freshness and vitamin C, as leeks, cabbage and dried broad beans were all that had been eaten through the winter.

Salads of Lamb's lettuce, also called corn salad, were made at the end of winter; oxalis blooms in the woods and was eaten raw; burdock, nettle and orache filled the pots with free and delicious porry, and if need be, people would do with ferns of the asplenium scolopendrium species, with young wild asparagus sprouts or butcher's broom, with different kinds of (water or land) cress, with buttercups and even with bouchibarbe, a food for dearth, so hazardous for the empty stomachs. In addition to the daily bread, green herbs would bring the healthy vitamins and the fibres, so useful to digestion. But eaten alone, they could cause those dearth diarrheas that would kill the unfortunate more surely than going without food.

Medicinal Herbs

From food to medicine, there's barely a step away, taken readily by the Medieval doctors, so powerless in the face of sickness, that no means to fight it off seemed derisive. Besides, the Aristotelian theory of the four elements was pervasive in the minds of both the people and the elites, and according to it, anything that enters into the body acts on the balance of the humours, therefore on health. Medical care was, first of all, a change of diet. Herbal plants, both food and medicine for the most (as sage, considered to be a panacea, capable of healing all ills) were taken regularly, without it being known, whether the consumer's motivation was eating or health care. Medical prescriptions would often look like special diets, and the very same plants of the vegetable garden were found in the potions.

The virtues of each plant were well known by the scholars, who wrote up dedicated dictionaries. Platearius depicts 420 different plants in his Book of simple medicines, including some as common as cabbage, and others, rare and exotic.

Household Uses for Herbs

In the Middle Ages, herbs and flowers were prized as much for their aroma as their good looks. This is not surprising, as the Medieval home or castle was a malordorous place according to our standards, given the lack of running water, flush toilets and refrigeration, which we take for granted. To conceal the unpleasant odors, the Medieval housewife strew sweet-smelling herbs on the floor that gave off an agreeable smell when crushed underfoot; she hung bunches of aromatic herbs in the kitchen, larder and linen cubboard; and buried her nose in bunches of fragrant herbs for a treat. If she was lucky enough to have a tiny walled flower garden, she filled it with the sweetest smelling flowers, to escape into whenever she could.

Herbs were also relied on to help keep under control the armies of fleas, lice, cockroaches, moths, rodents and other domestic pests that were an ever present part of Medieval life.

Candles used to be made from the waxy coating of the wax myrtle berry - sometimes known as the candleberry - or the bayberry, gathered and made just before Christmas, with which their wonderful smell became associated. Candles seem to absorb any lingering odors and keep the room smelling fresh and clean.