Salad burnet is a small, hardy perennial of the rose family whose lacy leaves taste of fresh cucumber. It is one of the seven herbs of Frankfurt green sauce and, as pimpinella, an Italian salad herb.
What it is¶
Salad burnet is a small, tidy perennial that forms a rosette of arching stems, each carrying pairs of small, rounded, toothed leaflets — a little like a delicate fern or a wild rose leaf. In early summer it sends up wiry stems topped with round, thimble-sized flower heads, green at first and then tinged red, with tufts of red styles and pale stamens. It grows wild on dry chalk and limestone grassland in southern Britain and across much of Europe.
Its fresh cucumber taste is its whole appeal. It is related neither to cucumber nor to the aniseed plant (Pimpinella anisum) despite sharing the Italian name pimpinella, and it should not be confused with great burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis), a taller plant of damp meadows with dark red flower heads, which is less used in the kitchen. In German it is Pimpinelle or Kleiner Wiesenknopf.
Origins and history¶
Salad burnet has been eaten in Europe for centuries. The genus name Sanguisorba means "blood-absorbing", from its old use to stanch bleeding, a traditional use rather than an established one. Tudor and Stuart gardeners valued it as a salad plant and a flavouring for wine and ale, and Francis Bacon, in his essay "Of Gardens" (1625), recommended planting burnet with wild thyme and water mint along paths so that it would release its scent when trodden on.
English settlers took it to North America, and it was grown there both as a salad herb and as fodder: Thomas Jefferson is recorded as growing burnet at Monticello. In the eighteenth century it was also sown as a grazing crop for sheep on poor, dry land in Britain. It is still a meadow and grassland plant in many European seed mixes. In the kitchen it slowly faded in Britain, but it never went out of use in Frankfurt and parts of Italy.
Flavour and aroma¶
Young leaves taste strikingly of fresh cucumber, with a light nutty note and a faint astringency from tannins. Older leaves, and those from plants that have flowered, become tougher, more bitter and more astringent. The flavour is delicate and does not survive cooking: salad burnet is a raw herb, used in quantity and added at the last moment. The compounds behind the cucumber note have not been studied in the detail given to more famous herbs.
In the kitchen¶
- Frankfurter grüne Soße: Frankfurt's famous green sauce is made from seven fresh herbs — borage, chervil, cress, parsley, salad burnet, sorrel and chives — chopped or blended with soured cream, yoghurt or quark, egg and a little oil. It is served cold with halved hard-boiled eggs and boiled potatoes, or with boiled beef, and is eaten especially on Maundy Thursday (Gründonnerstag). The herbs are sold ready-bundled in white paper cones in Frankfurt markets, and the name has had EU protected (PGI) status since 2016.
- Italy — pimpinella: added to mixed leaf salads, especially in Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria; an old Italian proverb holds that a salad is not good without pimpinella. It also goes into frittata, and it can be one of the wild greens in Ligurian preboggion, the mixture used to fill pansoti.
- Salads: young leaves stripped from the stems into green salads, potato salad, cucumber and tomato salads, and grain salads.
- Dressings and butters: chopped into vinaigrette, mayonnaise, cream cheese and herb butter for fish.
- Drinks: a sprig in summer drinks, gin and tonic, Pimm's-style cups and white wine.
- Soups: stirred into cold soups such as gazpacho or a chilled cucumber soup just before serving.
Strip the leaflets from the stems by pulling them between your fingers; the stems are wiry and tough.
💡 Pick young
The best leaves are the small, pale ones in the centre of the rosette. Cut off flower stems to keep new leaves coming.
Buying and storing¶
Salad burnet wilts quickly once cut. Keep sprigs in a glass of water, or wrapped in damp paper in the fridge, and use within two days. It does not dry well and becomes almost tasteless. For green sauce out of season, chopped leaves can be frozen with the other herbs, though fresh is far better. Since it is often evergreen, a plant in the garden gives leaves for much of the year.
Substitutes¶
A little finely chopped cucumber peel or cucumber gives the flavour. borage leaves, finely chopped, have a similar cucumber note, and in Frankfurt sauce the two together cover each other's absence. chervil and parsley give green freshness without the cucumber. There is no dried substitute.
Pairs well with¶
Eggs, potatoes, cucumber, tomatoes, soft cheeses, quark, soured cream, white fish, smoked fish, borage, chervil, chives, parsley, sorrel, dill and mint.
Growing your own¶
Salad burnet is one of the easiest herbs to grow. It is fully hardy, drought-tolerant and happy in poor, dry, chalky or alkaline soils, in sun or light shade; rich, wet soil is the only thing it dislikes. Sow in spring or early autumn, direct or in modules, and thin or plant out at about 30 cm apart. It stays green through most winters in southern Britain.
Cut the leaves regularly and remove flower stems as they appear to keep the plant producing tender young growth. If flower heads are left, it self-seeds freely. Plants can be divided in spring, and a few plants in a sunny, free-draining patch will last for years. It is also a good plant for wildlife gardens and meadow plantings. See planning-a-herb-garden.