Chervil

• cerfeuil

  French

• Kerbel

  German

• kervel

  Dutch

• cerfoglio

  Italian

• French parsley

  English

  A shop name rather than a real one, and misleading: chervil is a different genus from parsley and tastes of anise, which parsley does not.

Delicate, faintly aniseed, slightly sweet, with a clean green finish and no bitterness or pungency at all. It is the mildest herb in this catalogue, which is both its character and the reason it is so easily lost — almost anything else on the plate will cover it.

A light anise over a fresh green base, much gentler than tarragon and without its bitterness. The aroma is fugitive: it is at its clearest in the seconds after chopping and noticeably diminished a few minutes later.

Bright fresh green, lacy and fine. Dried chervil is a pale dull green.

Fine and lacy, wilting on contact with heat. Chervil is used in sprigs as much as chopped, because the leaf shape is part of what it contributes.

• Estragole — The anise note, and the compound chervil shares with tarragon. It is present at much lower concentration here, which is why chervil is delicate where tarragon is assertive.(what estragole is)
• 1-Allyl-2,4-dimethoxybenzene — A methoxy-substituted aromatic reported as characteristic of chervil oil, contributing to its particular sweetness — the note that distinguishes it from a simply weaker tarragon.
• Green-leaf volatiles — The fresh-cut note that makes up much of the impression, and the fraction that disappears fastest after cutting.

Last of everything, and preferably in sprigs. Chervil is destroyed by heat within seconds and loses much of its aroma within minutes of being chopped, so it goes onto the plate rather than into the pan and it is cut at the moment of serving. Where the dish allows, whole sprigs are better than chopped leaf: less cut surface means slower loss, and the lacy leaf is part of what chervil contributes. If a sauce must carry it, steep it cold or barely warm and strain — nothing above a simmer will leave anything behind.

A finishing herb for delicate things. Chervil goes with eggs, with young vegetables — asparagus, peas, new potatoes — with white fish and shellfish, into butter sauces and vinaigrettes off the heat, and into fines herbes. In Germany and the Low Countries it is the basis of a spring soup, which is close to the only tradition that uses it in quantity. It is wasted on anything robust: a dish with garlic, chilli or long cooking in it will not register chervil at all.

• boiling — Destroyed. Chervil added to a hot liquid is gone within seconds — this is the herb the fines herbes rule about adding at the very end was written for.
• frying — Scorches instantly. Chervil is never cooked.
• infusing — Works only cold or barely warm. Chervil steeped in cream or in a vinaigrette gives its aroma up readily and holds it for hours rather than days.
• grinding — Chopped rather than ground, and at the last moment: the aroma is measurably weaker within minutes of the knife.

Crush a leaf and look for anise. Chervil that smells only green has lost the distinguishing note, and at that point flat-leaf parsley would do the same job for less money.

• No anise on crushing
• Yellowing or blackening leaf tips
• Limp lacy foliage that will not revive in water

• Very rapid volatilisation of estragole and the green-leaf fraction
• Enzymatic browning of the cut leaf
• Microbial spoilage of a soft wet herb

Grow it or go without. Chervil is the clearest case in this catalogue of a herb that cannot be bought in any useful preserved form: the dried leaf has lost the anise entirely, freezing destroys the structure, and the fresh bunch keeps for two or three days. A pot on a shaded windowsill sown in succession is the only reliable supply, and it is the reason chervil is common in French home cooking and rare in British — not a difference of taste but of whether the plant is in the garden.

• A clear anise smell when a leaf is crushed; without it you are holding parsley or a spent bunch.
• Bright green lacy foliage with no yellowing and no blackened tips.
• No flower stems — a bolting plant is finished.
• Bought the day it is needed, because it will not keep.

No meaningful spice grading applies, because there is effectively no dried trade. It is bought as produce and judged as produce.

Apiaceae

A slender annual to about 50 cm with finely divided, almost fern-like bright green leaves and small white umbels. The whole plant is soft and the leaves are noticeably lacier than flat-leaf parsley, which is the usual point of comparison.

The Caucasus and western Asia, naturalised across much of Europe. Its spread into European gardens is old enough that it is often described as European, which is a naturalisation rather than an origin.

• France — major producer. The only country where chervil is grown and sold at any scale, which is a consequence of demand rather than of climate.
• Netherlands — notable producer
• Belgium — notable producer
• Germany — notable producer

Cut young, six to eight weeks from sowing and always before the plant flowers. A chervil that has begun to bolt is coarse and bitter and does not recover.

1. Successive sowing — Sown every two or three weeks, because a single sowing gives only a short window before bolting. This is a production step rather than a garden preference: continuity of supply is achieved by repeated planting rather than by storage.
2. Cutting young — Whole plants or outer leaves cut before flowering.
3. Cold chain and rapid sale — Cut chervil is handled cold and sold within days. It has the shortest shelf life of any herb in this catalogue.
4. Herb butter and compound preparations — The only preservation with any claim to work: chopped chervil folded into butter and frozen, where the fat holds the volatiles and the leaf is not asked to keep its structure.Why: Drying destroys the aroma and freezing destroys the leaf. Holding it in fat sidesteps both, and produces a different ingredient rather than preserved chervil.

Handled as fresh produce rather than as a graded spice. The commercial criteria are leaf condition, colour and absence of bolting, and there is effectively no dried trade to grade.

Not an adulteration target — the market is too small and the product too perishable. The substitution that occurs is at the shop counter, where flat-leaf parsley is sold or bought as chervil, sometimes under the name French parsley.

Sown in succession every few weeks because each sowing gives a short window before bolting. Grown in partial shade, and often under cover for the winter market. It resents transplanting and is sown where it is to grow.

Cool and shaded. Chervil bolts almost immediately in heat and full sun, which is the practical obstacle to growing it — it is a spring and autumn crop in most of Europe and impossible in summer, and a bolted plant is finished within days.

Chervil travelled west from the Caucasus and was established in European gardens by the medieval period, spreading as a garden plant rather than as a trade good — a herb this perishable has never been shipped. Its place in the French repertoire is a product of the same nineteenth-century codification that fixed fines herbes, and its near-absence from British and North American cooking is a supply story rather than a taste one: it does not survive the distribution chain those countries built.

Minimal international trade. Chervil is grown close to where it is sold because it cannot travel, and France accounts for most of both.

A minor European record as a spring tonic and digestive, of a piece with the seasonal use of the fresh herb. Recorded as tradition; SpiceHQ makes no health claim on that basis.