[Sca-cooks] Top 20 Multiuse Herbs and Spices plus Salt

[Sharon Gordon]

People's thoughts on this are really interesting.  And there are a number of
herbs that most people would like to have.  I'd love to see answers from
more people or even from your persona's time and place :-).

To shed some light on the thinking behind this...thoughts and further
considerations e marked with ***

***The goal was to focus on 20 culinary herbs, but also to pick some(half or
more)  that had at least one additional use.  It's a way to look at herbs
you have around for cooking and think --What else could I do with this?

***In the future I think it would be fun to consider questions like
---What are your top 20 choices of herbs for the first aid kit or the
medicine cabinet?
---What wild herbs would you most like to be able to forage?
---If you could have a dozen herbs that were good natural dyes, what would
you choose?  By using different mordants, what colors could you get from
your herb collection?
---If you were going to give a scribe 20 herbs that would be useful to a
person interested in the scribal arts, what would you include in your gift
and why?
---If you grew a period garden in your persona's location and time, what 20
herbs for all uses would you most want to grow?

>> Hey, one plant, one herb! Of course it's only one!
>> Arastorm
>Not necessarily. Nutmeg and mace come from the same tree but are
***For the purposes of this question, you can consider one plant to be one
herb.  So nutmeg/mace is one.  Coriander/cilantro is one  Fresh
celery/celery seed/ground celery seed/celery leaves/dried celery is one.

>Does that mean the only herbs and spices available for physic would be the
ones I keep for cooking?
***This question is more like--You have 20 cooking herbs and spices.  What
else can you do with them?

>For cooking, I would like to include pepper and cinnamon, but for
multi-use I have to consider medicine and dyeing and  magick as well. Good
food is life enhancing, but good health overrides everything
***Cinnamon(either Cinnamomum verum or Cinnamomum aromaticum) and pepper
both have a varietyof medicinal uses.  Also it's important to consider how
the soothing effects of a satisfying and tasty diet have a positive effect
on people's health.

>Why do we only have 20? Is it because you have to produce them yourself or
is it like an iron chef competition where you have to use only the given
ingredients
***This was sort of an iron chef effect to make the discussion more
manageable.  If I'd said something like, Please name every cooking herb
you'd ever want to use and list all the other ways  they could be used, it
would probably have taken years to come up with an answer to the question.
Feel free to give yourself a different limit though and add to the answer.
Maybe you would like to see what you'd include in a collection of 50 herbs.

>Why are garlic and onions being included on so many herbs and spices lists?
While they both have and add distinctive flavors, I have always treated them
and used them as a root vegetable in my modern and period cooking.
***They could go on herb lists or vegetable lists.  On an earlier question
involving pantry/root cellar but not herbs and spices  favorite foods, some
people included them as an item for the pantry and some people said they
would include them with their herbs and spices on another list.

Sharon
gordonse at one.net