Burnet has “two little leives like unto the winges of birdes, standing out as the bird setteth her winges out when she intendeth to flye.... Ye Duchmen call it Hergottes berdlen, that is God’s little berde, because of the colour that it hath in the toppe.” This is Turner’s[15] information. He has a pleasant style, and tells us out-of-the-way facts or customs in a charming manner. Burnet is the first of the three plants that Sir Francis Bacon desired to be set in alleys, “to perfume the air most delightfully, being trodden upon and crushed.” The others were wild thyme and water-mint. It was a Salad-herb, and has (like Borage) a flavour of cucumber, but it has, most undeservedly, gone out of fashion. The taste is “somewhat warm, and the leaves should be cut young, or else they are apt to be tough. Culpepper and Parkinson advise that a few leaves should be added to a cup of claret wine because” it is “a helpe to make the heart merrie.” Canon Ellacombe[16] says it was “and still is valued as a forage plant that will grow and keep fresh all the winter in dry, barren pastures, thus giving food for sheep when other food was scarce. It has occasionally been cultivated, but the result has not been very satisfactory, except on very poor land, though, according to the Woburn experiments, as reported by Sinclair, it contains a larger amount of nutritive matter in the spring than most of the grasses. It has brown flowers from which it is supposed to derive its name (Brunetto).”
[15] Turner’s Herbal is beautifully illustrated; five initial letters from it are [here] reproduced.
[16] “Plant-lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare.”
INITIAL LETTERS FROM TURNER’S “HERBAL”
Caraway (Carum carvi).
Shallow. Now, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour we will eat a last year’s Pippin of my own grafting, with a dish of Caraways, and so forth. II. Henry IV. v. 3.
In Elizabethan days, Caraway Seeds were appreciated at dessert, and Canon Ellacombe says that the custom of serving roast apples with a little saucerful of Caraway Seed is still kept up at some of the London livery dinners. It was the practice to put them among baked fruits or into bread-cakes, and they were also “made into comfits.” In cakes and comfits they are used to-day, and in Germany I have seen them served with potatoes fried in slices. The roots were boiled and “eaten as carrots,” and made a “very welcome and delightful dish to a great many,” though some found them rather strong flavoured. “The[17] Duchemen call it Mat kumell or Wishenkumel and the Freses, Hofcumine. It groweth in great plentye in Freseland in the meadows there betweene Marienhoffe and Werden, hard by the sea banke.”
[17] “Turner’s Herbal,” 1538.