Sweet Woodruff

Description

Small hardy perennial, with rhizomes, formant of the carpets from 15 to 20 cm in height in fresh wood, often of the forest of beeches.
Verticillate sheets, small white flowers in bunches at the top.
Practically non-existent in the north of the furrow Sambre and Meuse, it is particularly common in Gaume. It flowers to leave of April until May.

Virtues

Sweet Woodruff contains coumarin, which has a anti-spasmodic action and facilitates digestion. It calms also the giddinesses, migraines and the melancholy. Catch the evening out of infusion in water, it gives good results against insomnia.

It’s small history

Yesterday: known since the Antiquité for freshness who brings its vanilla odor (due to coumarin that it contains) when it is dried, it was used in the manufacture of mattress and cushion (according to the legend, the Virgin Mary used some for the manufacture of the mattress of Christ in the crib, the name of Sweet Woodruff in Dutch is elsewhere “lievevrouwebedstro” what means “the straw of the bed of Notre-Dame”)

One hung of them also bouquets dried with each spring birth with the beams or directly to the cradle because the plant moved away the bad spirits and protected from the witches.
In 743, the Boniface pope prohibits these practices considered as pagan.
Sweet Woodruff however is soon rehabilitated bus henceforth devoted to Marie, for the reasons seen higher.
Consequently the aspérule was allowed by
the Church and the priests made some hang large bouquets at the time of the Saint Barnabe and the Pierre Saint.

Today:
Sweet Woodruff (asperula odorata) uses the composition of a named apéritive drink Maitrank “drink of May”, invented by the monks Benedictines of the abbey of Prüm in Germany at the 9th century. Consumed with moderation, it is dépurative, and beneficial cleans between seasons of them. In the maitrank, Sweet Woodruff macerates in white wine.
In Virton since about thirty years a drink called exists Zigomar which is wine-based apples in which Sweet Woodruff is macerated.
A brotherhood of the same name, made up of jolly fellows established her den in the wood of Reduction.
One can read on the pediment of the fountain close the maxim to Zigomars: “it is better to be poor and live like a rich person that to be rich and live like poor”

There are as many receipts of Maitrank or Zigomar that Lorraine families or gaumaises, each one having its receipt, its secrecy.
The receipts which follow give you a base, with you of improve it with your suitability and your taste while adding to it of the fruits or of brandy.
THE ZIGOMAR
1 liter of wine of apple apples or juice if you do not drink alcohol – 60 gr. of bits of Sweet Woodruff not flowered – 60 sugar gr. – an orange.
To make macerate all the ingredients during 2 or 3 days, filter.
To be useful very fresh with a section of orange.
MAITRANK
Macerated hot: one pours on 60g bits of Sweet Woodruff not flowered 1 liter of ebullient white wine, then one adds 100 sugar gr. To let infuse 1 hour. To cool and be useful very fresh.
Macerated cold: take a white wine bottle, a tuft of bits of Sweet Woodruff not flowered, sugar 50g, 1 Decilitre of water, an orange.
To let infuse Sweet Woodruff one hour in the wine in a fresh place. Pass the wine. Water sugar in the water and to add to the wine. Add the orange juice filtered. Stir up slightly and are useful very fresh.

[Edité le 01 Avril 2009]