Surely it was a romantic folk that kept in its
store-rooms the "best Blew raisins of the sun," or "plumpsome raisins of
the sun," and made its mead with dew, and eagerly exchanged with each other
recipes for "Conserve of Red Roses." And now we come to an essential
feature of the whole. It is a _cuisine_ that does not reek of shops and
co-operative stores, but of the wood, the garden, the field and meadow.
Like Culpeper's pharmacopeia, it is made for the most part of "Such Things
only as grow in England, they being most fit for English Bodies." Is it any
wonder that the metheglin should be called the "Liquor of Life," which has
these among its ingredients: Bugloss, borage, hyssop, organ,
sweet-marjoram, rosemary, French cowslip, coltsfoot, thyme, burnet,
self-heal, sanicle, betony, blew-button, harts-tongue, meadowsweet,
liverwort, bistort, St. John's wort, yellow saunders, balm, bugle,
agrimony, tormentilla, comfrey, fennel, clown's allheal, maidenhair,
wall-rue, spleen-wort, sweet oak, Paul's betony, and mouse-ear?
The housewife of to-day buys unrecognisable dried herbs in packets or
bottles.
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