OF SUNDRY HERBS 131 



together, and fry them with fresh butter; garnish them 

 with Seville oranges cut in quarters, and strew powdered 

 sugar over them. The New Art of Cooking, by Richard 

 Briggs, many years Cook at the Globe Tavern, Fleet 

 Street, the White Hart Tavern, Holborn, and at the Temple 

 Coffee House, 1788. 



To MAKE A PLAIN TANSY. Take a fine stale penny loaf 

 and cut the crumb in thin shaves; put it in a bowl, then 

 boil a mutchkin of cream, and when boiled pour it over the 

 bread, then cover the bowl with a plate, and let it lie a 

 quarter of an hour ; then mix it with eight eggs well beaten, 

 two gills of the juice of spinage two spoonfuls of the juice 

 of tansy and sweeten it with sugar, nutmeg, and a little 

 brandy : rub your pan with butter and put it in it ; then 

 keep it stirring on the fire till it is pretty thick; then put 

 it in a butter'd dish ; you may either bake it, or do it in the 

 driping pan under roasted meat. From The Receipt Book 

 of Elizabeth Cleland, 1759. 



TARRAGON 



Tarragon is a comparative newcomer in the herb garden, 

 for it was first grown (and then only in the Royal gardens) 

 in Tudor days. Evelyn says that " the tops and young 

 shoots like those of Rocket must never be excluded from 

 sallets. 'Tis highly cordial and friendly to the head, heart, 

 and liver." One old herbalist gives the strange advice 

 that when tarragon is a foot high it should be taken up and 

 put back into the same hole in order to make it grow better ! 



TARRAGON VINEGAR. Strip the Tarragon from the stalks, 

 put it into a Pot with White-wine and Vinegar, in equal 

 quantities ; stop it up close and keep it for use. 



THISTLE 



Both the milk thistle and the blessed thistle were used 

 by our ancestors, the former as a vegetable and the latter 

 as a tonic, and Evelyn, in his Acetaria, says that to a salad 



