Medieval knights carried thyme for courage and sleepers hid it under pillows
Egyptians used thyme in embalming, Greeks burned it in temples believing it gave courage, and medieval women handed sprigs to knights for the same reason. Today its main oil, thymol, is an active ingredient in Listerine mouthwash, and a freshwater fish, the grayling, is named after its thyme-like smell.
Culinary thyme is the dried leafy tops of certain plants in the genus Thymus, part of the mint family. Its species are native around the Mediterranean, from North Africa and the Levant to southern Europe, and wild thyme may first have been cultivated in the Levant. The Romans are thought to have spread it across Europe, using it to freshen rooms and flavour cheese and liqueurs. In the Middle Ages it was also laid on coffins to ease passage to the next life.
The grayling's scientific genus, Thymallus, was coined by Linnaeus in 1758 because its flesh gives off a faint scent of the herb. The common garden plant, Thymus vulgaris, comes from southeastern Europe and likes hot sun and well-drained soil; it shrugs off drought and should be trimmed after flowering to stop it turning woody. It keeps its flavour through drying better than many herbs and belongs in both bouquet garni and herbes de Provence. A sprig is a single woody stem with leaf clusters spaced 15 to 25 millimetres apart.
The distinctive flavour comes largely from thymol, the most abundant volatile compound in the leaves, together with carvacrol. Thyme oil contains 20 to 54 percent thymol, a substance long used in traditional medicine as an antiseptic. The leaves also hold flavonoids and rosmarinic acid.
Relatives vary widely. Caraway thyme smells strongly of caraway thanks to carvone, woolly thyme is grown purely as ground cover, and in Iceland people gather mother of thyme for cooking and infusions. Creeping wild thyme blankets dry, rocky ground in southern Europe and North Africa, feeding honeybees; Greece and Malta are famous for its honey, and it also sustains caterpillars of the large blue butterfly.
Source: Thyme
