Pennyroyal (was Re: [Sca-cooks] Period or no?

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Maggie MacDonald <maggie5 at cox.net>
>
> Theres always a nice barley pottage, with whatever root veggies you want to
> add. Enrich it with onion soup, garlic broth, or whatever.
>
> -------------------------------
>
> I just tried one of the recipes in Henry Marks' book on Byzantine cooking.  Most of them are conjectural, since they are based on descriptions of food, and monastery menus, but this one is pretty straight forward.
>
> To paraphrase, the original description says to cook lentils in water with barley, leeks, dill, oil, and vinegar; and if you desire, savory or pennyroyal.  (As pennyroyal can be unsafe, Marks substitutes mint, which is in the same family.)  Use less barley than lentils, so they don't absorb all the liquid.
>
Just as a note, pennyroyal, though in the mint family, does not actually
taste like mint. I used to use pennyroyal tea for migraines (and we can
argue relative toxicity later) and it tastes more woody and not really
minty. Kind of like thyme, actually. I want to say it tastes like oregano
would if you took out all the strong oregano flavor, but that probably
makes very little sense to most people.

So one is probably better off leaving it out rather than substituting mint
for pennyroyal, at least if you're going for something that tastes right.

Margaret FitzWilliam