[Sca-cooks] Seasonal Offerings -- Take Some Thyme

[Jeanne]

 http://www.almanac.com/seasonalofferings/season.0799/somethyme.nl.html

IS THERE A bed of sweet-smelling thyme in your kitchen garden? In medieval
France, a bed of thyme was planted for the fairies -- a cozy spot to place
tiny cakes or cookies on Midsummer Eve as gifts for these magical creatures.
If the food was gone the next morning, the garden would thrive. If the
fairies were not pleased, they could cause such maladies as stitches and
itches, fevers, and cramps.

Later in England and colonial America, thyme was a medicinal remedy, "good
against the wambling and gripings of the bellie . . . helpeth the Lethargie,
frensie and madnesse," according to John Gerard's Herball (1597). Thyme was
one of several ingredients in Doctor Stephen's Cordiall Water, which
"comforts ye vitall spirits, preserveth ye joynts, helpeth inward disseases
comeing of cold . . . and whosoever useth this water sometimes, but not too
often preserveth theyr health & causeth them to look young."

With thyme in almost every kitchen garden, it was, perhaps, inevitable that
its use would expand into the purely culinary. Simply because of its
wonderful flavor, thyme began to turn up in stews and soups, chicken dishes,
and stuffings, as well as with broiled or roasted meat.