Date: 11:29 pm Fri Apr 12, 1996 Number : 58 of 100 From: Galen Starwalker Base : [PODS] Herbal Tips & Tricks To : All Refer #: None Subj: Culinary Herbs 15 Replies: None Stat: Sent Origin : 12 Apr 96 00:52:00 Lavender Ice Cream (from _At Home with Herbs_, Jane Newdick, Storey Communicaltions, 1994, changed a bit) 4 egg yolks 3/4 cups sugar 2/3 cup half-and-half [half cream, half milk] 6 fresh lavender flower heads 2/3 cup whipping cream or heavy cream 2 cups of milk Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until light and foaming. Gently heat the half-and-half in a pan with the lavender flowers. Bring to the boil, then strain into the egg yolk mixture. Return the mixture to the stove and cook over very low heat, stirring constantly until it is slightly thickened and will coat the back of a spoon. Do not let it boil. Pour the custard into a bowl, and refrigerate until it is completely cold. Whip the cream just until it forms peaks and fold it into the cold custard. Add remaining 2 cups of milk. Process in an ice cream maker, or freeze in the container in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. Serve with thin, crisp cookies. [O', I do say...] Now, I know this last is not a culinary item, but I've been very good about leaving out the 4,012 craft uses of lavender I could have mentioned, and I did bring these up earlier, so indulge me: Lavender bottles Lavender bottles are a very old little whimsey. You must use freshly cut lavender. Once it has dried, the stems will break as you try to bend them, and your bottles will fall apart before they are made. Use a goodly bunch of lavender, 15 to 20 stems with flower heads. Also have on hand some strong thread. Neatly bunch the lavender and tie the stems together just below the flower heads. Wrap the thread several times around the stems to make a strong band. Trim the thread ends. One stem at a time, bend the stems over the flower heads. Work around the bundle, carefully. The stems will form a kind of cage over the flowers. As the lavender dries, the stems will shrink some, and the "bottle" will be more open. When all the stems are bent over the flowers, tie them again at the point just below the flower heads. Your earlier tie will be obscured. Tie the bottoms of the stems together, too. Tie tightly, because the stems _will_ shrink. You can tie narrow ribbons over the strings to make things prettier. ===== 2.15.4 Which Lavender do you have? ----- By Susan L. Nielsen "Oh, call it by some better name..." -- Thomas Moore The _Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology_ (C.T. Onions) considers that the English word "lavender" derives, through a painful series of transcriptions, from the Latin *lavare* (to lave, to wash), though Professor Onions comments that, if this is so, "the sense-development is obscure." Perhaps he was unfamiliar with lavender-scented baths. *Lavandula* varieties are many, and the manifold literature does not come to any tidy agreement on the number of lavender species. At last I went to _Hortus Third_ to settle the matter. While this is specifically a North American reference, I do not believe there can be too many examples of this herb not now grown somewhere in N. America. The following is a fairly tedious list but, because of the large number of names under which lavender is sold, I have listed the subspecies and cultivar names (forgive me, but I have omitted the convention of italic markers for genus, species and variety names; cultivars are in single quotes). The list is somewhat abbreviated. All names not listed are judged, "without botanical standing.": L. angustifolia: ENGLISH L. (synonyms = L. delphinensis, L. officinalis, L. Spica, L. angustifolia, L. pyrenaica, L. vera). Cultivars = 'Alba', 'Atropurpurea', 'Compacta', 'Dutch', 'Fragrance', 'Hidcote', 'Munstead', 'Nana', 'Rosea', 'Twickel Purple', 'Waltham'. L. dentata: FRENCH L. (also, previously, sometimes referred to as L. delphinensis). Var. candicans. L. lanata: (plants offered under this name may sometimes be angustifolia). L. latifolia L. multifida: (synonym = canariensis) L. pinnata: Var. Buchii. L. Stoechas: SPANISH L., FRENCH L. (synonym = pedunculata). Some folklore: Three of the above names are interesting in history. *L. Spica* (spike Lavender [who says Latin is tough?]), shows in its name the earlier use of the term "Spike" to refer to lavender (as, Culpeper's Oil of Spike). The Greeks called this plant, 'Nardus.' Bible readers will here recognize the name Spikenard: "While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof." said the dark, passionate lover in "The Song of Solomon" (1:12), and "Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon..." (4:13,14). *L. vera* (English Lavender), is also called "true" Lavender, and *L. stoechas*, French Lavender. Obviously there is room for a cross- Channel rivalry here. The English Lavender claims to possess the finest, true lavender scent: *vera*. In fact, it is the basis of the huge commercial market in lavender. French Lavender, on the other hand, (according to dear Mrs. Grieve, _A Modern Herbal_, 1931, reproduced by Dover Publications, 1971), is "probably the lavender so extensively used in classical times by the Romans and Libyans as a perfume for the bath." This is a fairly distinguished citation, which endures despite the fact that its aroma is judged by some to be "musty," by others "musky" (a distinction one might have thought more clear), and, by the more discriminating, "like a cross between lavender and rosemary." So, among these worthies, the question remains, which do you have? Or even, which do you want to have? The above list should help if you have purchased lavender with a nursery tag in the pot and are unsure where you stand among the synonyms. If you have no lavenders, or wish to increase your holdings, and are looking for guidance, you might consider the attributes you most seek. If you are very involved in processing, and want to extract oils, for instance, you might choose the larger-leaved Spike varieties for a greater yield of oil. Be forewarned, however, that oil extraction requires _enormous_ quantities of material for a start. If you live in a harsh, cold-winter area, the hardier L. angustifolia (vera) might be your best choice. For deck or terrace edging, parterres, or walkway borders try the smaller varieties: Hidcote, or Munstead, for example. If your lavender has wooly white foliage, in a mound of about 12" height, and blooms late in the season on towering stems topping at 3' or so, you probably have L. lanata. Its scent will be similar to that of L. angustifolia. The L. pinnata and L. multifida cultivars have greyish, ferny foliage. L. dentata has little "teeth" along the edges of the leaves. Its scent is said to suffer from the same shortcomings as that of the Stoechas lavenders. For historical interest, or from the standpoint of a collector, of course, one cannot have too many lavenders. And all of them are equal candidates for inclusion in the garden. ----- "...we shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall." -- Izaak Walton, _The Compleat Angler_, 1653-1655. ========== --- DB 1.58/003790 * Origin: The Rain Forest * Denver,CO * (93:9083/4)