Herbs and Spices

With Charleston’s well-documented kitchen gardens, her love of the imported, and her Creole mix in the kitchen, her cooks have long leaned toward highly seasoned fare. The Deas family daybook in the collection of the South Carolina Historical Society was written sometime prior to 1749. It typifies the colony’s burgeoning interest in botany, and includes precise instructions for gardening in the subtropical Lowcountry. In February, it notes, “Dung yr ground well, & sow cabbage, savoys, coloworti, salloting of all sorts—carrots, spinago, onions, parsley, beets, scorsonoroot—plant melons & cucumbers, Windsor and half-spur beans, dwarf peas, all sorts of sweet herbs—strawberries, rue, tansie, balm, sage, sorrol, horseradish, plant asparagus, artichokes, set onions and leeks.” Thyme, hyssop, marjoram, savory, pennyroyal, mint, and peppers are also mentioned in the fragile manuscript, along with notes on curing scurvy (“take the root of sasafras . . .”), and the reigns of British royalty (ending at George II). “In dry and hot weather,” the scribe warns, “cut as few herbs as you can except such as you are to dry for winter.”