Kitchen Garden

Simon Courtauld

During autumn, my local market was selling four varieties of sage plants: green, purple, golden and variegated. All are suitably flavoured for the kitchen, and can be kept in pots before planting out in spring. Tricolor is an attractive variety: the green leaves have white edges; the new growth is tinged pink and purple.

Sage is an undemanding herb, requiring only well-drained soil and sun. It can be grown from seed, if you have the patience to wait. Our common grey-green sage has been growing here for at least ten years, although one is advised to replace sage bushes after three or four years with young plants grown from cuttings.

But ours continues to thrive,

having been clipped and shaped each year after summer flowering and again in early spring, when the woody stems may need to be cut back. A mature bush can be earthed up with soil, allowing the buried stems to root. These can then be lifted in summer, cut from the main plant and placed in a new permanent position.

Its name, salvia, is derived from the Latin salvere, ‘to save’: sage was formerly regarded as a universal remedy for all ills. It was used as an antiseptic, and supposed to cure the palsy, strengthen the sinews, improve memory, stop hair falling out and increase the circulation of the digestive system. An infusion of sage leaves was often used before tea arrived from China.

More relevantly today, with the approach of Christmas, we might raise a glass to 17th-century naval commander, scientist, astrologer and diplomat Sir Kenelm Digby. Also quite a philanderer, he supposedly enjoyed the favours of two queens – Marie de’ Medici and Henrietta Maria.

Aside from these various pursuits, he developed the modern wine bottle and wrote dissertations on food; his recipes were published as a cookbook shortly after his death. More than 350 years ago, it was this distinguished polymath who gave us sage and onion stuffing.