The leaves give a lemon taste to beverages and jellies. They are highly fragrant and release a clean, lemon scent when bruised. The dried leaves retain their scent for years and are used in making teas and potpourris. The extracted oil is used in perfume-making.

Lemon balm is used in herbal teas, both for its flavor and its mild sedative properties. The tea is recommended to induce perspiration and relieve fever due to cold and flu, and to ease menstrual cramps, insomnia, headaches and nervousness. It is a key ingredient in certain perfumes and cosmetics. It is useful for all sorts of nervous problems. The balm also relieves cramps, dyspepsia, fratulence, colic, chronic bronchial catarrh, and some forms of asthma. The terpenes, part of the pleasant smelling essential oil from lemon balm, produce this herbs relaxing and gas-relieving effects. Flavonoids, polyphenolics, and other compounds appear to be responsible for lemon balms anti-herpes and thyroid-regulating actions. The German Commission E monograph suggests a simple tea made from 2 tablespoons of the herb steeped for ten to fifteen minutes in boiling water three times daily.

The tiny leaves of this certified organic herb impart a soft, lemony fragrance to meat, fish and poultry dishes. It is especially good in Mexican dishes. For a refreshing cup of herb tea, brew it in combination with mint.

Or sweet marjoram, Old World perennial aromatic herb of the mint family, cultivated in gardens for flavoring of various kinds of recipes. The closely related European pot, or wild, marjoram (Origanum vulgare) has similar uses and is the spice usually sold as oregano, although other species may be called oregano. The generic names Marjorana and Origanum are frequently interchanged. Infuse as a tea for colds and headaches. Add a decoction to bath water as a relaxant. Use in potpourri and scented pillows. The tops yield origanum oil, once used medicinally but more recently for perfuming soaps.

Also called LAUREL LEAF, leaf of the sweet bay tree, Laurus nobilis, an evergreen of the family Lauraceae, indigenous to countries bordering the Mediterranean. A popular spice used in pickling and marinating and to flavour stews, stuffings, and fish, bay leaves are delicately fragrant but have a bitter taste. They contain approximately 2 percent essential oil, the principal component of which is cineole. The smooth and lustrous dried bay leaves are usually used whole and then removed from the dish after cooking; they are sometimes marketed in powdered form. Bay has been cultivated from ancient times; its leaves constituted the wreaths of laurel that crowned victorious athletes in ancient Greece. During the European Middle Ages bay leaves were used medicinally. Grieve: Leaves, berries and oil have excitant and narcotic properties. The leaves are also regarded as a diaphoretic and in large doses as an emetic.

Large chunks of the whole peel are best for inclusion in teas and herbal concoctions. It's easily strained out of teas and the large pieces preserve more of the flavor giving essential oils. The powder, obviously, can be dissolved in mixes and stews.

A delightful addition to drinks, cakes  often candied or fermented. Kings: Orange peel is aromatic and slightly tonic, but is seldom used except to cover the taste of disagreeable medicines or to lessen their tendency to nausea.

Also called absinthe. Wormwood is traditionally used as a tea or smoke. Yes, wormwood is an inebriating pipeful - its psychoactive thujones seem to bind to the same receptor as THC. Several species of Artemisia are also smoked for visionary effect by some Indian tribes. Although the oil destroys various types of worms, long-term use, due to the somewhat toxic thujones, may cause damage to the human nervous system. Ordinary wormwood teas or tinctures, however, contain very little thujone, and are generally considered safe for short-term use. Also present in the plant are strong bitter agents known as absinthin and anabsinthin. These stimulate digestive function, including gall bladder function. Grieve: Tonic, stomachic, febrifuge, anthelmintic. A nervine tonic, particularly helpful against the falling sickness and for flatulence. It is a good remedy for enfeebled digestion and debility. Fluid extract, = to 1 drachm. Wormwood Tea, made from 1 OZ. of the herb, infused for 10 to 12 minutes in 1 pint of boiling water, and taken in wineglassful doses, will relieve melancholia and help to dispel the yellow hue of jaundice from the skin, as well as being a good stomachic, and with the addition of fixed alkaline salt, produced from the burnt plant, is a powerful diuretic in some dropsical cases. The ashes yield a purer alkaline salt than most other vegetables, except Beanstalks and Broom. A light infusion of the tops of the plant, used fresh, is excellent for all disorders of the stomach, creating an appetite, promoting digestion and preventing sickness after meals, but it is said to produce the contrary effect if made too strong. The flowers, dried and powdered, are most effectual as a vermifuge, and used to be considered excellent in agues. The essential oil of the herb is used as a worm-expeller, the spirituous extract being preferable to that distilled in water. The leaves give out nearly the whole of their smell and taste both to spirit and water, but the cold water infusions are the least offensive. The intensely bitter, tonic and stimulant qualities have caused Wormwood not only to be an ingredient in medicinal preparations, but also to be used in various liqueurs, of which absinthe is the chief, the basis of absinthe being absinthol, extracted from Wormwood. Wormwood, as employed in making this liqueur, bears also the name 'Wermuth' - preserver of the mind - from its medicinal virtues as a nervine and mental restorative. If not taken habitually, it soothes spinal irritability and gives tone to persons of a highly nervous temperament. Suitable allowances of the diluted liqueur will promote salutary perspiration and may be given as a vermifuge. Absinthium occurs in the British Pharmacopoeia in the form of extract, infusion and tincture