Sugar and spice

I FIRST grew sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) thanks to my father-in-law: one mention that I’d recently read about it had him trowel in hand, lifting multiple self-seeded plants into pots of varying size for me to lighten his burden. I introduced him to the joys of sweet cicely gin a few months later and he’s regretted thinning his supply ever since.

- Mark Diacono

Sweet cicely is not hard to love. It grows to about 3ft tall and has the same poetic lilt when the wind catches it that is shared by so many narrow-stemmed, fern-like umbellifers. Every part of this delightful plant carries a sweet aniseed flavour and fragrance—a gorgeous coming together of fennel, liquorice and star anise—that has made it particularly popular in France, Germany and Scandinavia. Here it has gone from relatively commonly used to rare over the past 100 years: perhaps, between us, we can put that to rights.