Tansy

Tanacetum vulgare · Herb

40 pairings

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) is a tall, aromatic daisy-family herb crowned in late summer with flat clusters of gold, button-like flowerheads and cloaked in fern-cut, glossy leaves that smell sharply of camphor, rosemary and bitter herbs. Once a fixture of the medieval and early-modern kitchen — pounded into "tansies," the green, faintly bitter baked puddings and cakes eaten at Easter, and steeped into cordials and bitter ales — it has all but vanished from cooking today, its warning-strong flavour and toxic thujone content having pushed it firmly out of the modern larder.

Picking a good onedrag

Just cut, leaf dark and springy, camphor sharpLimp and blackening, the camphor gone

Fresh and soundSound is not safe. Leaf and flowers are toxic in quantity and the oil far worse; this page records deaths from tansy tea and oil. Not a culinary herb, and never in pregnancy.Not a food herb

Scent of a rubbed leafCamphor still clear, the green edge thinner

Colour of the ferny leafGreen but matte, a yellow leaf or two low down

Stem and leaf in the handStem firm, the finest segments beginning to droop

The buttons, if in flowerGold still, the odd button loosening at the centre

What to look for, from just cut, leaf dark and springy, camphor sharp to limp and blackening, the camphor gone.

Preparing