Tag Archives: herbs

Shaker Herbs Part Four- Culinary Herbs

Posted on by

The Shakers served plain food but it was nourishing and, from the recipes I’ve tried, flavorful. There was some overlap of course. Basil, for example, was used as a tea and an aromatic to prevent excessive vomiting. Rosemary was also used as a tea and its oil was made into a liniment.

Some of the other herbs are not so unsurprising. One of my favorites is for a Dandelion salad. (Seriously!) The mixture includes dandelion leaves, simmered until tender and drained, then put into a saucepan with egg yolks, cream, butter and other herbs such as mint, lemon thyme and so on. The mixture is put on slices of stale bread and fried and then seasoned with oil and vinegar and parsley.

Fish was poached with chamomile leaves or covered with chamomile sauce. (Make a roux with butter and flour (2 Tablespoons each), add a Cup of chicken stock, parsley, the chamomile leaves and add salt and pepper to taste,) Marjoram, basil, parsley and basil went into meatloaf, tarragon, summer savory, marjoram, chervil and thyme into chicken fricasee.

Hancock Village served an herb soup made up of chopped sorrel, chopped shallots, chervil, mint and parsley boiled in milk. Butter and salt and pepper are added to taste and the whole mixture poured over squares of toasted bread.

I want to add a note about the Shaker’s recipe for bread which I found in a James Beard bread book. It is so delicious I could eat an entire loaf. But I digress.

Another soup is apple soup, so tasty on a cool fall day. A quartered apple, cored but unpeeled, a quartered onion and a herb mix of marjoram, basil, summer savory and more combined with cinnamon is cooked in the top of a double boiler. The apple is removed when soft and the soup is strained. Cider and cream is added when ready to serve.

Some of these herbs and herb mixes can be purchased in the gift shops of the various museum communities and at Sabbathday Lake. Hancock Village had a mix that includes basil, parsley, marjoram, oregano, tarragon, thyme and more. It has been several years since I purchased my supply so I am not sure it is still available.

The Shakers and Herbs, Part One

Posted on by

The Shakers arrived in the New World in 1774. Like most of the new colonists, they brought some herbal knowledge with them. Yarrow, boneset, dandelion (which is not native to North America) are some of the plants brought over from Britain. Although there were doctors, most of a family’s medical needs were served by a wife or mother, midwife – not the doctor. But I digress.

Again like many of the new colonists, the Shakers drew upon the knowledge of the local tribes to learn about the herbs in the woods. At first, the Shakers wanted the herbs to treat the illnesses in their own community. Later, they planted physic gardens to meet their needs. As farmers everywhere do, if they grew a surplus, they sold it. This was the beginning of a thriving  and very profitable business.

Although Watervliet was the first Shaker community, (just outside of Albany several of the old fields now lie under the Albany airport), the Central Ministry was located at New Lebanon in New York (west of Albany.) The herbal trade began here and soon spread to several other communities, Canterbury, NH and Union Village near Lebanon, Ohio among them. AS we all know, the health business is rife with quackery, The snake oil salesman is a caricature of reality for our early history. The Shakers, despite the fact they were considered religious oddities (almost cultists) brought herbal medicines to respectability.

It was also incredibly lucrative. At its height, the business grossed $150,000 annually. This in a time when an experienced carpenter might make four shillings a week. In today’s money, that $150,000 a year would be worth upwards of 2 million.

The Shakers, by the way, kept meticulous records. Besides commercial transactions , they carefully documented what herb was shipped where and what it cost, they kept records of every aspect of Shaker life. The health of every individual was of prime importance. In fact, the Millennial Laws decreed that “As the natural body is prone to sickness and disease, it is proper that there should be suitable persons appointed to attend to necessary duties in administering aid to those in need.” In health care, as in so many other practices, the Shakers were well in advance of the society that surrounded them.

A quick review of the records pertaining to the deaths of these community members and in an age when the life span was between 40 and fifty, it is not surprising to find Shakers passing away at 87, 88 and even 101.

I based my primary Shaker community Zion on Sabbathday Lake which is located in Alfred, Maine. It is still home to the last remaining Shakers. (Three at last count. When I first began my research several years ago there were ten.) A visit to any of the gift shops in what were once thriving Shaker communities reveals packets of herbs for purchase, all packed at Sabbathday Lake. The remaining Shakers continue to labor exactly as they always have done.

Next: a review of some of the less common herbs used and sold by the Shakers.

Herbal Remedies

Posted on by

Herbal remedies have been used for thousands of years and are still used today – although frequently the active ingredient has been removed and transformed into a pill. The examination of Neanderthal remains, for example, reveals traces of poplar bark and willow bark (bark which contains high levels of salicylic acid – otherwise known as the active ingredient in aspirin – as well as the kind of mold that is used for penicillin.  Lavender is still commonly used as are the culinary herbs. Many of them were used in the past for their medicinal properties. Lavender, for example, was used for flatulence and fainting.

But well into the 1800’s, before the advent of antibiotics, herbal remedies were the only choice. Remedies were passed down orally and usually kept secret.  Many people did not visit a doctor until adulthood if in fact they ever did. It is fortunate that many of these remedies were efficacious. Many of the male doctors of the time accepted women with herbal knowledge but would not share their medical knowledge. Women were the ‘weaker vessels’ and so should be restricted to the garden variety remedies. But the doctors were not above borrowing these remedies; many of the tonics and teas and poultices were effective. In the early 1700’s a Mrs. Feeld (a midwife) had a ‘green’ ointment which contained such herbs as sorrel, bay leaves, sage, lettuce, camomile and violets. (The Shakers sold herbal remedies and sage, used in tonics, was an astringent and sorrel, also in tonics, was an antiseptic.) Early colonists used sage to treat everything from gray hair to yellow teeth to failing memory. It does not do all of that BUT it is found in some treatments for the throat and also for cognitive issues. Lettuce was used as a mild narcotic. Who knew?

As mentioned above, midwives frequently treated many illnesses.

My mother always grew a flower – Calendula – which has pale yellow to orange flowers. It looks like of like marigolds. Well, this was used for topical ointments for burns and cuts. Neither of us knew its medicinal properties. Another plant, which I consider a weed and eradicate whenever I can, is St. Mary’s thistle. It can also be used topically. Other culinary herbs, such as rosemary, was used in a tonic for coughs and colds and the oil was used as a liniment. Thyme was used for stomach aches.

Many of the midwives were Indians or part-Indians. (In Vermont and Maine, they were frequently from the Abenaki tribe.) Their use of herbs was extensive and many Colonists learned from them. More about this in a future post.

Herbal remedies were also part of a larger topic – folk medicine. Some of these treatments, although they sound very odd, actually work. Next week, folk medicine.