Wood avens root ✦

Racine de benoîte

What it is

Augsburg brewers hung a linen bag of the dried root inside each cask, and the beer was said to keep from souring as well as taste of clove — the root carries eugenol, the compound cloves are named for. Its French name is a worn-down herba benedicta, blessed herb, the heading monastic gardeners filed it under.

In the kitchen

Dig it in autumn or very early spring and use it fresh; dried and kept a year it holds almost nothing. One root the length of a finger will clove a litre of milk or stock, and it comes out at twenty minutes or turns astringent.

Goes with

Cream Apple Prune Honey Pork Rye berries

In season alongside

Bay bolete Black morel Bronze bolete Musky truffle Burdock root Burgundy truffle

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