I love those moments when I translate a German word … only to be just as lost as I was before.
A while ago, I discovered nice little boxes of frozen herbs in the grocery store. Parsley, dill, chives … The kinds of herbs I love to use but can never seem to use up when I have to buy them fresh in bunches. It’s so handy to have them all chopped up and waiting in my freezer.
The other day, I saw an eight-herb mix at the store. It looked interesting, and at about €0.75 per 50g I decided it was worth a gamble. Here is the ingredient list in German:
Petersilie, Dill, Kresse, Kerbel, Schnittlauch, Sauerampfer, Borretsch, Pimpinelle
I already knew some of the words. Petersilie = parsley, Dill = dill (of course), and Schnittlauch = chives. Not sure of the rest of the list, I plugged it into Google Translate and came up with this:
Parsley, dill, cress, chervil, chives, sorrel, borage, burnet
What? The only new word I recognized was cress; the rest weren’t any clearer than the German words. A bit of research told me that chervil is related to parsley; borage, also called starflower, has a kind of cucumber taste (and the plant has edible blue flowers!); burnet also has a cucumber-like taste; and sorrel’s taste is compared to kiwis and strawberries (note to self: try that one on its own sometime). Side note: My husband told me that borage (گاوزبان) is used to make a blue-colored tea in Iran, but he didn’t recognize it by its English name.
The most important piece of information I found, however, doesn’t relate to the individual herbs at all. While looking up these herbs I discovered that together they are the blend of herbs that go into Grüne Soße (Green Sauce). I have never had this sauce before, but I’ve heard about it—and now that I have the herbs, I may just have to try making it!
Expat Linguist 