Many recipes for a “Tansy” exist, and very often have only the slightest resemblance to one another, but this is rather a nice one and is declared by its transcriber to be “the most agreeable of all the boiled Herbaceous Dishes.” It consists of: “Tansey, being qualify’d with the juices of other fresh Herbs; Spinach, green Corn, Violet, Primrose Leaves, etc., at entrance of the spring, and then fry’d brownish, is eaten hot, with the Juice of Orange and Sugar.” Isaac Walton speaks of a “Minnow Tansy,” which is made of Minnows “fried with yolks of eggs; the flowers of cowslips and of primroses and a little tansy; thus used they make a dainty dish of meat.” Our ancestors seem to have had a great love of “batter,” for it is a prominent part in very many of their dishes. Mrs Milne Home says, “In Virginia the Negroes make Tansy-tea for colds and at a pinch, Mas’r’s cook will condescend to use it in a sauce,” but in English cookery, it has absolutely disappeared.
Tansy had many medicinal virtues. Sussex people used to say that to wear Tansy-leaves in the shoe, was a charm against ague.
Wild Tansy looks handsome when it grows in abundance on marshy ground; and, indeed, its feathery leaves are beautiful anywhere, and it has a more refreshing scent than the Garden-Tansy. “In some parts of Italy people present stalks of Wild Tansy to those whom they mean to insult,”[53] a proceeding for which there seems neither rhyme nor reason. Turner tells tales of the vanity of his contemporaries, masculine as well as feminine, for he says:
“Our weomen in Englande and some men that be sunneburnt and would be fayre, eyther stepe this herbe in white wyne and wash their faces with the wyne or ellis with the distilled water of the same.”
[52] Complete Account of the Coronations of the Kings and Queens of England, J. Roberts.
[53] Folkard.
Thistle (Carduus Marianus and Carduus Benedictus).
Margaret. Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus, and lay it to your heart, it is the only thing for a qualm.
Hero. There thou prick’st her with a thistle.
Beatrice. Benedictus! why Benedictus? you have some moral in this Benedictus.