Lavender in herbes de Provence is a 1970s marketing addition
Lavender feels like the essence of southern French cooking, yet around 1900 Provençal cooks did not use it; the classic regional cookbook never mentions it. Spice wholesalers invented the herbes de Provence blend in the 1970s, and lavender only joined it in the North American version. The plant's name itself comes from the Latin for washing.
The genus Lavandula has 47 known species, native from the Iberian Peninsula and North African coast through the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent. The English word appeared in the 13th century, most likely via Old French from Latin lavare, to wash, reflecting the use of blue lavender infusions in bathing. The popular labels English, French and Spanish lavender are used loosely and can each point to more than one species; so-called English lavender is not even native to England.
Romans already knew several species. Medieval Europeans split them into two groups until Linnaeus merged them, recognising just five species in 1753. Dorothy Chaytor's 1937 classification at Kew proposed six sections for 28 species, and she thought garden lavenders were hybrids of true lavender and spike lavender. The 2004 scheme of Upson and Andrews arranges 39 species in eight sections within three subgenera, though easy cross-pollination keeps blurring the lines.
Lavender oil contains around 93 identified compounds, dominated by linalyl acetate and linalool, with proportions varying widely between species. Commercial growers favour lavandin, a hybrid with bigger flowers that is easier to harvest; its oil carries more camphor, a sharper note some consider inferior. The plants like dry, gravelly, sunny ground, need little fertiliser, and suffer root rot in humid conditions or under moisture-trapping mulch. Most crops are still picked by hand. Topped lavender has been a declared noxious weed in Victoria, Australia, since 1920.
Lavender reached England in the 1600s, and Elizabeth I reportedly enjoyed a lavender conserve. Cooks mostly use dried buds, which are stronger than fresh, so recipes cut quantities by about two thirds to avoid a soapy taste. The flowers flavour sugar, scones, custards and chocolate desserts, and bees turn their plentiful nectar into a prized monofloral honey produced mainly around the Mediterranean.
Source: Lavandula
