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The Still-Room

The Still-Room

The room where the still once stood, and the work that happened in it: plants gathered from the verge and the hedge, then turned to cordials, butters, wines and remedies. Wild garlic into oxymel, hawthorn flowers into butter, cowslips into a wine that emptied the meadows. The herbs come with the uses they were put to, before the chemist took them over.
17
Jun
A glass jar of yellow St John's wort flowers steeping in oil on a sunlit windowsill, beside a small bottle of finished deep-red oil, with loose flowers on the sill, watercolour.

St John's Wort: The Midsummer Plant and Its Blood-Red Oil

Hypericum perforatum opens at the solstice, five-petalled and egg-yolk yellow. Hold a leaf to the light and it is pricked all over with oil glands, the source of an oil that steeps blood-red.
3 min read
17
Jun
A white bowl of pan-seared sugar snap peas, bright green, dotted with cubes of crisp pancetta, lemon zest and shredded mint, raw pods and a mint sprig beside it on wood, watercolour.

Sugar Snap Peas: When to Pick and the Victorian Butter Pea

The point of a sugar snap is the pod, so the picking rule reverses the shelling pea: take them while the pods are still flat and the peas inside are no bigger than a match head.
3 min read
17
Jun
A bunch of freshly pulled carrots with feathery green tops, tied with twine, resting on dark crumbly soil at the edge of a vegetable bed, blurred rows of foliage behind, watercolour.

Carrot Fly: Why a Late-June Sowing Escapes It

Sow a row of carrots in late June and you often miss the carrot fly. The first generation has finished laying by now, and quick germination gets the roots up before the second arrives.
3 min read
11
Jun
A white plate of sliced roe venison in deep-red raspberry sauce, with buttered Jersey Royals and watercress, ringed by thyme, a shallot, garlic, raspberries and new potatoes on cream paper.

Roe Venison: A Loin Cooked Rare with Summer Berries

Roe is lean and dries out if cooked like red deer. Mrs Beeton hashed it slowly; the modern exception is the loin, seared hard and rested long, with a sauce of crushed June raspberries.
3 min read
11
Jun
A still-room flat-lay on pale paper: a conical etched minim glass of amber tincture, a glass dropper, a corked amber bottle, lavender and lemon balm sprigs, and a small white spoon.

The Minim: The Smallest Measure in the Still-Room

A minim is one sixtieth of a fluid drachm, the smallest measure in the old apothecaries' system. It exists because a drop is not a reliable amount, and you can still count one with a dropper and a 5 ml spoon.
3 min read
11
Jun
A summer road verge in flower: ox-eye daisies in front, browned cow parsley and hogweed seedheads behind, tall grasses and purple knapweed, with green fields and a hedge beyond.

Reading a Road Verge: The Flowers That Date Old Grassland

Some verge flowers colonise any disturbed bank within a season; others are slow perennials of old grassland. Learning which is which lets you read how long the turf beside a road has been there.
3 min read
05
Jun
Elder branch (Sambucus nigra) in full June flower: creamy white flower heads and dark green pinnate leaves arching over a soft green watercolour hedgerow background.

The Elder: The Hedge Tree You Ask Before You Cut

The elder turns the hedges white in June. You asked its leave before cutting it. Hannah Glasse used the flowers to counterfeit a French wine.
3 min read
05
Jun
Self-heal in rough grass: short, dark maroon, bristly flower-heads studded with small violet two-lipped flowers, among paired oval leaves and tangled grass blades.

Self-Heal: The Wound Herb of the English Verge

Self-heal, the low purple plant of lawns and verges. Culpeper called it a herb of Venus; it carries genuine astringent compounds. With an oil.
3 min read
23
May
A small round of fresh white sheep's cheese on a dark slate, broken open to show its soft interior, with a stack of oatcakes and a wooden honey-dipper alongside.

English Sheep Milk Cheese: The Upland Summer Farms and the Modern Survivors

Sheep were milked in the Welsh hafod and Scottish shielings into the twentieth century. English sheep-milk cheese survives as Slipcote and Berkswell.
4 min read
23
May
Cowslips (Primula veris) in flower on an ancient meadow in May, with a green-winged orchid (Anacamptis morio) among them, viewed from ground level through long grass.

Cowslip: The Lost Meadow Flower and the Wine That Drained It

Cowslip (Primula veris) once grew in every English meadow. Lost to ploughing, fertiliser and the demand for the flower-pip in cowslip wine.
3 min read