How to Harvest Chervil Without Losing the Anise Flavor

Start cutting sooner than you think

Chervil is usable six to eight weeks after sowing, when the plant is only four to six inches (10 to 15 cm) across and looks too small to touch. Waiting for it to bulk up is a mistake. The plant has a short life, it is already counting down to flowering, and leaf taken young carries far more of the anise scent than leaf left to age on the plant.

Take the outer leaves and leave the center. Cut each stem right at the base with scissors rather than pulling, because pulling rocks the taproot and stalls the plant. Never take more than about a third of the foliage at once and the rosette keeps refilling from the middle for weeks.

1. Cut in the morning The aromatic oils are strongest before the sun has been on the plant, and the leaf is turgid rather than limp. Chervil picked at midday in warm weather wilts in your hand within minutes.
2. Work around the row rather than stripping one plant Taking a few outer stems from each of six plants gives you the same handful and leaves every plant growing. Stripping one plant bare sets it back a fortnight and often tips it into flowering.
3. Cut with scissors, not fingers The stems are hollow and crush easily. A crushed stump sits wet and rots back into the crown, especially on overwintering plants in a damp spell.

Thinnings are a harvest. When you thin the row to its final spacing you are pulling perfectly good young chervil, and at that stage the flavor is at its best. Wash them and use them the same day.

How long a plant keeps giving

The useful window depends almost entirely on temperature. A plant growing through cooling autumn weather or through a mild winter under a cloche will crop for two months or more. The same plant sown in late spring gives you two or three cuts before the flower stem appears. Knowing which kind of plant you have tells you whether to cut sparingly or to take everything now.

Cold does not spoil the flavor, it improves it. Chervil cut after a frost is sweeter and stronger than the same plant in mild weather, which is exactly why the autumn sowing is worth making.

Heat destroys the flavor, so add it at the end

The anise note in chervil sits in volatile oils that boil off in a minute or two of cooking. Chervil added at the start of a dish contributes almost nothing beyond a faint green color, which is why people who cook it like parsley conclude that it has no flavor and stop growing it.

Treat it as a finishing herb without exception. Stir it into an omelette as it comes off the heat, scatter it over soup in the bowl, fold it through butter, dressings, cold sauces and salads. Use it generously, in whole sprigs or a rough chop rather than a fine mince, because bruising also drives the scent off.

1. Add it off the heat Take the pan off the stove, then stir the chervil in. Even thirty seconds of simmering flattens it noticeably.
2. Use three or four times as much as you would parsley The flavor is delicate rather than weak. A tablespoon of chopped chervil is a garnish; a large handful is what actually makes a dish taste of it.
3. Chop it just before it goes in Chervil chopped and left on the board for ten minutes has already lost much of its scent. Cut it last of everything.

Keeping cut chervil

Chervil does not keep. Cut leaf holds for two or three days at best and drying it is a waste of time, because the oils that carry the flavor are exactly the ones that go with the moisture. Dried chervil from a jar is essentially green dust, and anyone who has only tried that has not tasted the herb.

Freezing works far better than drying. Chop the leaf, pack it into an ice cube tray with a little water or oil and freeze it, or blend it into softened butter, roll the butter in paper and freeze the roll to cut discs from. Neither is as good as fresh, but both keep enough of the scent to be worth doing when a plant is about to bolt.

1. Short term, treat it like a cut flower Stand the stems in an inch (2 to 3 cm) of water, cover the tops loosely with a bag and keep them in the fridge. That buys three or four days rather than one.
2. Freeze in butter or oil, not on a tray Fat holds the aromatic compounds far better than water or air does. Chervil butter is the single most useful way to carry a glut into the next month.
3. Do not bother drying it Whatever the method, dried chervil loses the anise note almost entirely. If you have more than you can use, freeze it or give it away.

Chervil is one of the classic fines herbes, alongside parsley, tarragon and chives. If you grow all four, cut and chop them together at the last moment rather than making up a mix in advance.

The last cut, and what to record

When the leaves emerging from the center turn narrow and the crown starts to lift on a stem, the plant is finished as a leaf crop. Take everything usable in one go rather than trickling cuts off a flowering plant, and decide there and then whether to pull it or to leave it standing for seed. Leaving two or three plants to flower gives you next season's seed and a supply of volunteer seedlings.

1. Record the date of the first cut Set against the sowing date it gives you the real time to harvest in your own garden, which is usually a week or two off the packet figure.
2. Record the date the plant ran to flower The span between first cut and flowering is the number that decides how often you need to sow. Two seasons of that figure and your successional sowings stop being guesswork.
3. Record which position lasted longest Note the row or pot alongside how much shade it had. The comparison between a shaded row and a sunnier one is the most useful thing chervil can teach you, and it only shows up in written notes.