Parsley
Petroselinum crispum
Origin: Eastern and Central Mediterranean
Parsley is the odd one out amongst the great culinary herbs, for it belongs not to the mint family of basil, thyme, sage, and oregano but to the Apiaceae, the carrot and celery family, the cousin of dill, coriander, fennel, and lovage. It is a single species, Petroselinum crispum, a biennial of the rocky Mediterranean coast, and its name records that habitat exactly: the Greek petroselinon, 'rock celery', from petra, a rock, and selinon, the celery-and-parsley plant. Native to the eastern and central Mediterranean, to Greece, the Balkans, the islands, and the North African shore, it was known to the ancients long before it was much eaten, and it has since become, in its several forms, the most widely used culinary herb in the whole of the Western world.
Though it is one species, parsley is grown in three quite distinct forms, divergent cultivated varieties that arose through long European selection rather than separate wild origins. Flat-leaf, or Italian, parsley (P. crispum var. neapolitanum) has broad, deeply cut, dark leaves and the fullest, most pungent flavour; it is the cook's parsley of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the parsley of tabbouleh, gremolata, persillade, and chimichurri. Curly parsley (var. crispum), with its tightly frilled, mossy leaves, is milder and more decorative, the garnish parsley of the northern European and Anglo-American table and the herb of the English parsley sauce. And root, or Hamburg, parsley (var. tuberosum) is grown not for its leaves at all but for its swollen, parsnip-like white root, a winter vegetable of the German, Polish, and Central European kitchen, where it flavours the great clear soups. Three forms, one plant, and between them the whole range of the herb's uses, from the chopped-leaf finish of a French dish to the soup pot of a Polish winter.
Parsley's leaves are rich in vitamins C and K, in iron, and in the aromatic oils apiole and myristicin that give the herb its clean, green, peppery bite, and they have a long-standing and genuine reputation as a breath freshener and a diuretic. But the plant has always had a strange, dark glamour about it too, for its seeds are famously slow and capricious to germinate, taking weeks to appear, and from that simple horticultural fact grew a whole web of folklore: that the seed must travel down to the Devil and back, seven times, before it will sprout; that it can be sown safely only on Good Friday, the one day the Devil has no power over the soil; that only a witch, or the true mistress of the house, can grow it; and that to transplant a parsley bed, or to give it away, is to invite misfortune or death. No other kitchen herb is so bound up with the grave and the Devil, and none is so universally loved at the table.
Parsley's journey begins in the symbolic world of the ancient Greeks, who held the herb in awe but rarely on the plate. To the Greeks parsley, and its near-relative wild celery, was the plant of death and of victory both: woven into the wreaths laid upon tombs and the crowns of the dead, and equally into the chaplets that crowned the victors of the Nemean and Isthmian Games, as bay crowned the Olympians. The plant was said to have sprung from the spilled blood of the infant Archemorus, and the grim proverb 'to be in need of parsley' meant to be at death's door. It was Rome that brought parsley to the table: the Romans cooked with it, recorded it in the recipes of Apicius, wore garlands of it at banquets in the belief that it absorbed the fumes of wine and staved off drunkenness, and carried the herb with their legions across the empire, into Gaul, Germania, and Britain, where it took permanent root in the kitchen gardens of the Roman world and the monasteries that followed.
Through medieval Europe, wrapped in its Devil-haunted folklore, parsley quietly diverged into its three forms, and each found its heartland. In the eastern Mediterranean it remained the bold flat-leaf herb, and in the Levant it rose to a height it reached nowhere else, becoming not a seasoning but a main ingredient: tabbouleh, the great Lebanese and Syrian salad, is a dish of parsley, finely chopped by the bunch, with only a little bulgur, mint, tomato, and lemon to support it, and parsley runs through the whole world of the Levantine mezze. In Turkey it is maydanoz, the herb of kısır and the kebab house; and eastward in Persia it joins the sabzi, the great bundles of fresh herbs that the Iranian kitchen treats as a food in itself, in kuku sabzi and ghormeh sabzi and the herb plate of every meal.
In the western Mediterranean and beyond, parsley became the indispensable background herb of European cooking. In Italy flat-leaf parsley is the prezzemolo of gremolata, the bright parsley-lemon-garlic rubble strewn over osso buco, of salsa verde, and of the soffritto that begins half the dishes of the country. In France it is one of the cornerstones of the kitchen, the persillade and the fines herbes, the bouquet garni and the maître d'hôtel butter, the green heart of jambon persillé and the snails of Burgundy. In England the curly form became the garnish of the nation and the basis of parsley sauce and the green parsley liquor of London's pie and mash. In Germany and across Central Europe the root form flavours the clear soups of winter, and Frankfurt built an entire dish, grüne soße, around a fistful of fresh herbs in which parsley leads. And carried across the Atlantic by Italian and Spanish emigrants, parsley became the defining herb of the Argentine asado in chimichurri, the sharp green sauce of parsley, oregano, and garlic spooned over grilled beef. From a Greek funeral wreath to an Argentine grill, parsley has travelled into very nearly every kitchen on earth.
Parsley is, quite simply, the most widely used culinary herb in the Western world, the green that finishes more dishes than any other. Its three forms divide the work between them: bold flat-leaf parsley for cooking and for the dishes in which the herb is a true ingredient; mild curly parsley for the garnish and the sauce; and the white root for the winter soup pot of Central Europe. As a flavour it is the great supporting herb, the clean, peppery, grassy note that lifts and freshens almost anything, stirred in at the last moment so its colour and life are not lost, and it is the backbone of a whole family of green herb sauces that span the world: the Italian gremolata and salsa verde, the French persillade, the Levantine tabbouleh, the Argentine chimichurri.
It is a cornerstone of the classical European kitchen, one of the herbs of the bouquet garni and the fines herbes, the maître d'hôtel butter and the persillade, and it is fundamental to the cooking of the Middle East and Persia, where it is treated less as a seasoning than as a green vegetable, eaten by the handful. In Central Europe the root parsley remains a beloved winter vegetable, and the curly leaf the universal garnish of the Anglo-American plate.
Nutritionally parsley is exceptional, dense in vitamins C and K and in iron, and it keeps its old reputation as a breath freshener (the sprig beside the garlicky dish is no accident) and a gentle diuretic. For all its humble, everyday ubiquity, it remains the herb that, more than any other, says fresh, green, and finished, the last bright note struck over the top of a dish, the most familiar and most useful green in the kitchen.
Historical Journey of Parsley
Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean — c. 3000 BCE
Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is a wild herb of the rocky Mediterranean coast, native to Greece, the Balkans, the islands, and the North African shore, and its very name, the Greek petroselinon or 'rock celery', records the cliffside places where it grows. To the ancient Greeks it was a plant of deep and double meaning, but rarely a food. It was the herb of death, woven into the wreaths laid on tombs and traced to the spilled blood of the infant prince Archemorus, so that the proverb 'to be in need of parsley' meant to be at death's door; and it was, at the same time, the herb of victory, for it was a crown of parsley (or its near-twin, wild celery) that was set on the heads of the champions of the Nemean and Isthmian Games, as bay crowned the victors at Olympia. The Greeks gathered it, garlanded with it, and buried their dead beneath it, and modern Greek cooking still uses it freely, as in the herb-flecked melitzanosalata of the mezze table; but it was Rome that would first make parsley a herb of the kitchen, and from this Mediterranean cradle it spread, in its several forms, across the whole world.
- Melitzanosalata (Greek smoked aubergine and parsley dip)
Rome, Roman Empire — c. 50 CE
Rome took the funerary herb of the Greeks and brought it to the table. The Romans cooked with parsley freely, recorded it throughout the first-century recipe collection of Apicius, and wore garlands of it at their banquets in the belief that the herb absorbed the fumes of the wine and warded off drunkenness, a notion that lingered for centuries. They valued it as a medicine and a digestive, and they grew it in every kitchen garden. Above all, Rome was the great disseminator: with its legions, colonists, and gardens, the empire carried parsley out of the Mediterranean into Gaul, Germania, and Britain, where the herb took permanent root and where, through the monastic physic gardens of the Middle Ages, it became a fixture of European cooking. The pounded herb-and-cheese moretum of the Roman table, fragrant with parsley and garlic, is the ancestor of every green herb paste that followed.
- Moretum (Roman pounded herb and garlic cheese)
The Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine) — c. 1000 CE
Nowhere did parsley rise so high as in the Levant, where it became not a seasoning but a main ingredient, the very body of a dish. Tabbouleh, the great salad of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, is above all a parsley salad: bunch upon bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped fine by hand, with only a supporting handful of bulgur, mint, spring onion, tomato, and a sharp dressing of lemon and olive oil. The proportion is the point, for a true Levantine tabbouleh is overwhelmingly green, a world away from the bulgur-heavy versions of elsewhere, and it is the dish by which a Levantine cook is judged. Parsley runs through the whole of the mezze table, in fattoush, in the herb plates, and in the stuffings and kibbeh of the region, the freshest and most abundant of the herbs that define the cooking of the eastern Mediterranean coast.
- Bakdounsiyeh (Levantine parsley and tahini sauce)
- Tabbouleh (Levantine parsley and bulgur salad)
- Fattoush (Levantine bread salad with herbs and sumac)
Isfahan and the Iranian Plateau, Persia — c. 1100 CE
In Persia parsley joins the sabzi, the great bundles of fresh green herbs that the Iranian kitchen treats not as seasoning but as a food in its own right. Parsley (ja'fari) is one of the herbs heaped onto the sabzi khordan, the plate of raw herbs, radishes, and white cheese set on the table at every meal, and it is one of the foundation herbs of the cooked dishes that are built on great quantities of greenery. Kuku sabzi, the dense, dark herb frittata thick with parsley, coriander, dill, and fenugreek, is eaten at the Persian New Year as a symbol of rebirth; ghormeh sabzi, the slow-cooked herb stew of the same greens with lamb, dried lime, and kidney beans, is the most beloved of all Persian stews. In a cuisine that uses fresh herbs by the kilogram, parsley is amongst the most essential, a green vegetable as much as a flavouring.
- Kuku sabzi (Persian herb frittata)
- Ghormeh sabzi (Persian herb and lamb stew with dried lime)
Burgundy and France — c. 1300 CE
Parsley is one of the cornerstones of the French kitchen, the green herb without which classical French cooking would lose its voice. It is the persillade, the fine mince of parsley and garlic strewn over a dish at the last moment; a foundation of the fines herbes and an essential of the bouquet garni; the green heart of maître d'hôtel butter, melting over a grilled steak or fish. In Burgundy it gives its name and its colour to jambon persillé, the Easter dish of ham set in a parsley-flecked white-wine jelly, and it fills the garlic butter that bathes the snails of Bourgogne, the escargots à la bourguignonne in which parsley and garlic, not the snail, are the true flavour. From the humblest bistro garnish to the grandest classical sauce, parsley is woven through the whole of French cookery, the herb a French cook reaches for without thinking.
- Persillade (French parsley and garlic mince)
- Escargots à la bourguignonne (Burgundy snails in parsley-garlic butter)
- Jambon persillé (Burgundian parsleyed ham in jelly)
- Maître d'hôtel butter (parsley and lemon compound butter)
Milan and Northern Italy — c. 1400 CE
Flat-leaf parsley, prezzemolo, is so fundamental to Italian cooking that an old Italian saying likens a person who turns up everywhere to parsley, 'essere come il prezzemolo', to be like parsley, in everything. It is the green of the soffritto that begins so many dishes, and the bright finish strewn over the top of others. Its two great set-piece roles are gremolata, the vivid rubble of chopped parsley, lemon zest, and garlic scattered over osso buco alla milanese to cut the richness of the marrow and the meat, and salsa verde, the Italian green sauce of parsley pounded with anchovy, capers, garlic, and oil that dresses the boiled meats of the bollito misto and much else besides. From the spaghetti aglio e olio of Naples to the risotto of the north, parsley is the herb that, more than any other, finishes an Italian plate.
- Gremolata (parsley, lemon, and garlic for osso buco)
- Salsa verde italiana (Italian parsley, anchovy, and caper sauce)
- Spaghetti aglio e olio (with garlic, oil, and parsley)
Gaziantep and Anatolia, Turkey — c. 1450 CE
In Turkey parsley is maydanoz, one of the most used herbs of the kitchen, heaped fresh into salads and chopped over almost every grilled meat. Its great dish is kısır, the southeastern Turkish salad of fine bulgur worked with a great deal of chopped parsley, tomato and pepper paste, spring onion, and pomegranate molasses, the Anatolian cousin of tabbouleh and a fixture of the women's tea-table and the mezze spread alike. Parsley sharpens the ezme and the çoban salad, freshens the kebab and the köfte, and fills the herb plates of the Gaziantep table, the great gastronomic city of the Turkish southeast. Like the Levant and Persia, the Turkish kitchen treats parsley with a generosity that the cooler north of Europe, which made it a mere garnish, never knew.
- Çoban salatası (Turkish shepherd's salad with parsley)
- Kısır (Turkish bulgur and parsley salad)
London and England — c. 1500 CE
In England, where the cooler climate favoured the hardy curly form, parsley became at once the universal garnish of the nation and the basis of a handful of beloved dishes. Curly parsley, frilled and decorative and milder than the flat-leaf herb, was strewn over almost everything, but it also went into the kitchen in earnest: parsley sauce, a simple white béchamel thick with chopped parsley, is the traditional English partner to poached fish, boiled gammon, and broad beans, and one of the comfort foods of the old British table. Most distinctive of all is the parsley liquor of London's pie and mash shops, the luminous green sauce, traditionally made with the cooking liquor of the stewed eels, that is ladled over meat pies and mashed potato in the East End. From the Sunday garnish to the green liquor of the eel shop, curly parsley is woven through English food.
- Parsley sauce (English white parsley sauce for fish and ham)
- Pie and mash with parsley liquor (London eel-pie shop classic)
Poland — c. 1550 CE
In Poland parsley became, above all, a root. The włoszczyzna, the bundle of soup vegetables whose name means 'the Italian things', is said to have been brought to Poland by the Italian queen Bona Sforza in the sixteenth century, and at its heart is the root, or Hamburg, parsley, the swollen white root whose sweet, earthy depth is the foundation of the Polish broth. Its supreme expression is rosół, the clear golden chicken broth that is the soul of the Polish Sunday and the obligatory first course of the wedding feast, simmered for hours with chicken, root parsley, carrot, celeriac, and leek until it is deep, clear, and restorative, then strained and served with fine noodles and a final shower of chopped fresh parsley leaf. From the root in the broth to the green on the top, parsley is woven through the whole of Polish cooking, the most beloved flavour of the national soup pot.
- Rosół (Polish clear golden chicken broth with root parsley)
Frankfurt and the German Lands — c. 1600 CE
In Germany parsley took its third and strangest form, the root. Hamburg, or turnip-rooted, parsley, grown for its swollen, parsnip-like white root rather than its leaf, became a beloved winter vegetable and a foundation of the clear soups of the German kitchen, where the Suppengrün bundle of root vegetables relies on its sweet, earthy, parsley-scented root. The leaf was not neglected either: Frankfurt built an entire celebrated dish around fresh herbs, grüne soße (grie soß), a cool green sauce of seven herbs bound in soured cream and yoghurt, served over potatoes and eggs, in which parsley is one of the leaders. Petersilienkartoffeln, new potatoes tossed in butter and chopped parsley, are a fixture of the German table. Curly and flat leaf, root and herb, parsley is woven through the cooking of the German-speaking lands.
- Frankfurter grüne soße (Frankfurt green herb sauce)
- Petersilienkartoffeln (German parsley potatoes)
Belgium — c. 1650 CE
In Belgium parsley is one of the indispensable herbs of a kitchen famous for its devotion to good plain ingredients cooked well, and it is bound up with the country's most beloved dish. Moules-frites, a steaming pot of mussels with a cone of crisp twice-fried potatoes, is Belgium's national embrace, and in its classic form, moules à la marinière, the mussels are opened in a fragrant steam of white wine, butter, shallot, celery, and a great deal of chopped parsley, the herb that perfumes the briny liquor then sopped up with bread and frites. Parsley runs through the rest of the hearty Flemish and Walloon table too, through the waterzooi, the stoemp, and above all the eel in green sauce, paling in 't groen, a dish built, like Frankfurt's grüne soße, on a fistful of green herbs. In Belgium parsley is the quiet, constant green of the everyday kitchen.
- Moules-frites (Belgian mussels in parsley and white wine, with frites)
Buenos Aires and the Pampas, Argentina — c. 1900 CE
Carried across the Atlantic by the great wave of Italian and Spanish immigration that remade Argentina around the turn of the twentieth century, parsley became the defining herb of the country's grill. It is the green body of chimichurri, the sharp, garlicky sauce of finely chopped parsley, oregano, garlic, chilli, vinegar, and oil that is spooned over the grilled beef of the asado and set on every Argentine and Uruguayan table, the indispensable partner to the steak. In the beef-and-fire culture of the pampas, where the cooking is plain and the meat is everything, it is the fresh, sharp, herbal cut of the parsley in the chimichurri that lifts and balances the richness of the grill, the immigrant Mediterranean herb naturalised as the green of the Argentine barbecue.
- Chimichurri (Argentine parsley, oregano, and garlic sauce)
