Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare)
Flowers: June to August. Height: 120cm (48in).
Tansy was a traditional Easter food in medieval times. Tansy cakes were made by baking a batter flavoured with green tansy juice. Used as a strewing plant.
Medicinal: For nervousness and labour pains and to repel bugs, worms and insects. Culpeper’s Complete Herbal (1653) said “Also it consumes the phlegmatic humours, the cold and moist constitution of winter most usually affects the body of man with”.
Culinary: Tansy cakes were popular Used as a substitute for nutmeg or cinnamon in herbal sauces, salads, Tansy cakes, custards and puddings. Leaves were added to omelettes and flowers used as a garnish. A recipe in the 1588 Good Housewife’s Handbook (1588) used the juice of tansy, feverfew, parsley, and violets, mixed with “the yolkes of eight or tenne eggs, and three or four whites, and some vinegar, and put thereto sugar or salt.” It was then fried to produce a large flat sweet pancake.
