Dill
Dill (Anethum graveolens) is an aromatic annual herb and seed spice. The plant has slender hollow stems, can reach heights of around 1m and has finely divided, thin, wispy leaves.
Umbels are large with small white to yellow flowers and yellowish-brown ridged ovoid fruits some 4–5mm long. It is probably native to south-west Asia and the eastern Mediterranean region. Indian dill is considered a sub-species, Anethum sowa. The fruits are pungent and aromatic with a slightly bitter aftertaste, with similarities to caraway. The name ‘dill’ appears to be of Germanic or Scandinavian origin, possibly derived from the Old Norse word ‘dilla’, meaning ‘to soothe’, as it was used to ease infants’ stomach pains.124Dill was present as a (probably) cultivated plant in Late Neolithic lake settlements in Switzerland (3400–3050 BCE), and was found in the tomb of Amenophis II (d. ?1401 BCE) in Egypt and in seventh-century BCE Samos.125 Dill-scented oil was burned in Greek homes and the oil was used in making some of their wines.126 Theophrastus described the fragrant sap of celery, dill, fennel, etc., as well as the roots, stems and seeds.127 Dioscorides observed that Anethon flowers steeped in oil was a good treatment for soothing and opening female genitals, for coldness and shivers at the start of a fever, warming and countering weariness and for relieving joint pains.128 The seed and dried filaments in a decoction helped numerous gastric complaints and promoted urine, among other benefits.129
Pliny described dill as a carminative; also, the roots could be applied topically in water or wine for defluxions of the eyes, and while the seed could arrest hiccups and dispel indigestion, the plant itself weakened the eyesight and generative powers.130 Gladiators ate dill as it was thought that the herb would boost their valour.131 Dill was present in first- to second-century CE deposits from the Roman Mons Porphyrites complex in the Eastern Desert of Egypt.132 It was introduced to Britain by the Romans.133
Dill was well known in Saxon times, is mentioned in Leechdoms and, according to the monk Aelfric Bata’s Colloquy, it was eaten every day, as were chervil, mint and parsley.
Ann Hagen commented that dill may have been grown at Dilcar in Cumberland and Dilwick in Bedfordshire.134 Dill seeds were well represented in mid-ninth- to eleventh-century cesspit deposits in York.135 Don Patrick O’Meara noted a pre-Conquest distribution for dill archaeobotanical records in northern England, with forty-four out of forty-six samples restricted to this period, and only two (from fourteenth- to fifteenth-century Beverley) occurring later than that.136 Colin Spencer commented that the white soup called ‘dillegrout’, traditionally served at coronation feasts since the coronation of William the Conqueror’s wife in 1068, was made with dill, and that it became an enduring tradition after William gave to his cook Tezelin the lordship of the Manor of Addington as a reward for creating the soup.137In The Widowes Treasure of 1588 there is a remedy ‘for a hot burning in the stomacke growen of Choller, which causeth the Fever’, which used herbs, including dill, and raisins and prunes seethed in pottage.138
John Gerard noted that ‘the whole plant is of a strong smell’.139 He listed the numerous virtues of the tops, seed and plant. A domestic book of 1615 used a small quantity of smallage, dill, aniseeds and burnet, dried and ground to a fine powder, and taken with a good draught of white wine, ‘for the difficulty of urine’.140
One of dill’s most famous uses is that in pickling cucumbers. Pickling of vegetables in general may have started as early as 2400 BCE in Mesopotamia, but the specific use of dill in the process might have originated much later, possibly in the fifteenth century CE.141 Boiled green fennel or dill was used with verjuice, salt and water to ‘preserve cowcumbers all the yeere’ in a 1603 cookery book and in similar seventeenth-century recipes.142 In the Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth, Commonly called Joan Cromwel of 1664 there is a pickling recipe that uses caraway, fennel and dill seeds; cloves; mace; ginger; nutmeg; and cinnamon all beaten together.143 In one recipe, Hannah Woolley in 1670 used dill and bay leaves, together with beaten spices, wine vinegar and salt; another used dill and fennel seeds, pepper, cloves and mace.144 Despite the wide variety of recipes pickling herbs, vegetables and fruits, dill appears only to be used in the pickling of cucumbers – for example, there are forty-six recipes for pickling in The English and French Cook of 1674, but dill only appears in that for cucumbers.145 Other pickling recipes using dill and/or fennel exist from this period.146 They were also used by Eliza Smith in 1727 in a similar recipe to pickle cucumbers and she also used dill seeds, along with other spices, in a recipe to pickle walnuts.147 Large-scale pickling recipes (of a thousand cucumbers) appear in the 1682 Salt and Fishery: A Discourse thereof, the first using dill, fennel, a strong brine of refined salt and beer or rape-vinegar, with roach-allom (potassium aluminium sulphate) dissolved therein; the second ‘according to the receipt of Mr John Bull’ used 6 pennyworth of dill and fennel, 2 pennyworth each of cloves and mace, 1oz of white pepper, 2oz of ginger, 4 gallons of elder vinegar, a handful of walnut leaves and 1 gallon of strong brine, all boiled together and then let stand, then added to the pot with the cucumbers.148 Perhaps the most famous (and arguably the world’s largest) user of dill pickles today is McDonald’s, which uses slices of the pickles in its hamburgers.
A 1653 medical text employed dill in several medicines.149 Dill seed (together with fennel seed, caraway seed, aniseed, liquorice seed, cubebs, nutmeg, mace, galingale, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, coral and amber) was used in a medicine to comfort the stomach.
Dill, alongside other herbs, was also used in a curious remedy for the ‘numme palsie’, which involved putting the herbs mixed with oil of castor, dill and camomile into the belly of a newly killed fox, roasting it and then collecting the oil that drops out to be used as a medicine for all palsies or numbness. Equally or even more bizarre was the remedy for aching joints, back or sciatica, which involved killing a live fox or badger, skinning, cleaning its bowels, breaking its bones to yield the marrow, boiling the carcass in brine, adding leaves of sage, rosemary, dill, oregano, marjoram and juniper berries and then, when well done, straining the whole to make the required liniment. It was also used in another somewhat less messy remedy to bathe aching limbs.Dill also appeared in The Compleat Housewife in a concoction for eye drops ‘to strengthen the sight and prevent cataracts’.150 Dill seeds, with a lesser quantity of fennel seeds, boiled in beer, strained and sweetened with sugar, were given as a drink to children as a remedy for rickets.151 Dill, mastic, frankincense, cumin seeds and mint were used in a rickets treatment in the 1690 Accomplished Ladies Rich Closet of Rarities, and dill seed in a teething treatment.152
Dill’s modern usage is as a flavouring for breads, sauces, dips, soups (e.g. borscht), pickles, potato dishes and in herb butter; the seeds also enhance the flavour of roasts, stews, soups, pickles and in vegetable and rice dishes, and it has enduring popularity in northern and eastern Europe, Ukraine and Russia. Indian dill seed is used as a spice in various north Indian vegetable dishes. It is popular in Gujarat, where stews of green lentils are prepared with dill weed as the vegetable greens.153 Dill is also popular in China and several Southeast Asian countries.