Nepeta cataria LABIATAE

Catmint, or catnip, is a delicately perfumed shrubby perennial, growing some 2 to 3 feet high and about 3 feet across. It has pale soft-green serrated leaves set opposite on rather woody stems, and beautiful tiny creamy flowers with a mauve patch, growing in clusters at the stem tips for most of the spring and summer. If the bush is cut back hard after each flowering flush, it will come again with renewed vigour. The seed is tiny, and the best method for harvesting is to cut the ripe branch, shake it upside down in a plastic bag, and recover the seed by putting the resulting mixture of pods, stems and trash (and probably one or two bugs) through a fine tea strainer.

The plant can be propagated by dividing the clump, or severing some of the new outside growth from the side of the clump with a sharp spade and planting anew. Layering is also a useful and time-saving way of increasing your plants.

In the eighteenth century tainted meat seemed to be the usual fare for those too poor to obtain regular fresh supplies. With no refrigeration, meat was salted or stored in cool rooms, in wired pantries or primitive “cooling boxes”, and various methods were used to take away its strong rather off-putting taste and aroma. Catnip, being a native of Britain, was one source of a readily available, pleasant purifier for meat that was to be stewed. It was often cooked with the meat or steeped with it in water for many hours before cooking. Another way of purifying meat was quoted by Audet in 1818 in the City and Country Cookbook: “The best way to rescue meat with a bad taste: drop the meat into boiling water. When foam appears on the surface, remove from fire and drop in two red-hot coals.

When the coals have ceased to hiss, the meat is ready for use.” Perhaps catmint was a more pleasant alternative.

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