Herbs

There is usually a rather confusing distinction made between pot-herbs and sweet herbs, which was originally enforced by Mr Loudon in his Encyclopaedia of Gardening and persists in gardening catalogues. Pot-herbs included parsley, purslane, tarragon, fennel, borage, dill, chervil, horseradish, Indian cress, and marigold. Sweet herbs were thyme, sage, savory, clary, mint, marjoram, basil, rosemary, lavender, tansy, and costmary.

As there is no logical basis for these two categories, it is much easier to remember that culinary herbs belong, with a few note-worthy exceptions, to two botanical families, the Labiatae and Umbelliferae. The members of the Labiatae group have their leaves impregnated with little glands containing a volatile oil, which is present to some extent in the flowers as well and produces a characteristic fragrance when rubbed or crushed. Marjoram, basil, rosemary, lavender, sage, mint, savoury, thyme, and balm belong to this order. In the plants belonging to the Umbelliferae, the oil is present chiefly in the fruits (seeds), though in the case of parsley, fennel, chervil, and lovage the leaves or fronds are very fragrant and widely used in cooking, while dill, annise, caraway, coriander, and cumin are used chiefly in seed form. The principal exceptions to this division of culinary herbs into two families are tarragon which belongs to the Compositae, borage to the Boraginaceae, and sweet bay to the Lauraceae families, each of which contain their fragrance in their leaves and flowers.