Louise Frazier's Complementary Herbs & Spices Chart
by Louise Frazier
Locally grown herbs create a delicate palate of flavors that go excellently with Biodynamically grown vegetables, accentuating their innate qualities and helping to balance a certain one-sidedness. In harvesting, vegetables are separated from their mother plant, and often roots, stems and leaves are removed to bring the edible portion for meal preparation. Adding complementary herbs or spices restores the whole qualities of the plant for completeness in human nutrition. Revival of this age-old wisdom brings us knowledge of the herbs and spices that best complement the various vegetables and grains coming to us from farm and garden.
Full-bodied flavor and tantalizing aroma begin the digestive process, awakening our appetites and the anticipation of our metabolic organs hungering for goodness. It is the flavorings that we savor in remembering festive foods, be our menu vegetarian or with meat. What would Thanksgiving be without parsley, sage, rosemary, marjoram and thyme in the stuffing or exotic cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg in all-American pumpkin pie?
According to Dr. Med. Udo Renzenbrink in Diet and Cancer, herbs and spices used as seasoning aid digestion, especially when they are tasted consciously, causing improved saliva, pepsin, gall and pancreatic secretions. Most herbs and spices broaden the life forces of the terrestrial-lunar nature of some vegetables. Light is prominent in the green plants, and we also can find ourselves cooled or warmed by their effects. The herbs of the Umbelliferae family-which include caraway, celery, dill, fennel and parsley-carry light as well as warmth forces in their delicate, lace-like leaves and aromatic seeds. The Labiatae, or mint family members, retain much of the aromatic flowering processes within the realm of the leaves, leaving them aromatic and full of essential oils. This family comprises some popular herbs-basil, marjoram, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme-widely used in Italian and Mediterranean cuisines.
Combining oregano and savory in meals during hot, humid weather lends us relief from these oppressive conditions. "Cool as a cucumber" is true, when it is balanced with mint or dill. Heavy cabbage is made more digestible with caraway seed; the watery nature of sauerkraut is aided by the fragrant fiery nature of juniper berries; chervil and caraway are good with moony cheeses. Beans are accentuated by savory, and tomatoes are complemented by basil and parsley. Eating very hot and spicy foods can bring too much phosphorus into us, making us become terrible fidgets, full of the will to do things. We must have a little phosphorus in us, however, so we can have will.
Herbs possess many qualities that are expressed to our senses as fragrances, pungent odors, or flavors-hot or spicy, bitter or delicate. The substances in the plants producing these effects are almost always small in quantity, evidencing the "dynamic" influences exerted by herbs, which make them such valuable members of our garden family. In forming essential oils, resins and aromatic substances, herbs and spices have taken the flowering process into other parts of the plant such as the leaves, stems, roots or seeds. Emerson tells us (in Perpetual Forces) that more servants wait on man than he will ever notice. Certainly we are well served by complementary herbs and spices when preparing our foods with them.