For hundreds of years, the British have grown costmary in their gardens and used it as an herb in salads or to give flavour to ale. Originally, the plant was simply called cost, a name that travelled from Sanskrit, to Arabic, to Greek, and then to Latin before entering Old English about a thousand years ago. In the fifteenth century, for unknown reasons, the herb named cost came to be associated with St. Mary, leading to a new name, cost St. Mary, soon shortened to costmary. The name Mary, incidentally, probably derives from an Egyptian source meaning to be fat, which would have had the extended sense of to be pregnant. The herb known as rosemary has a completely different origin, one that has nothing to do with roses or Mary: the ancient Romans called this herb ros marinus, meaning dew of the sea; this Latin name entered English in the eleventh century as rosemarine, but by the mid fifteenth century people were pronouncing it rosemary, perhaps due to the influence of costmary. When rosemary flowers are steeped in wine, the resulting spirit is called Hungary water, so named, according to legend, because a hermit gave the recipe to the Queen of Hungary, who drank it as a cordial.
A rather unusual herb possessing a delightful minty aroma, yet an acrid aftertaste, whose blossoms bear resemblance to yellow buttons or daisies. The elongated, slender, and light-green leaves, upon infusion, exude a tang akin to lemon that is exceedingly forceful, thus necessitating their sparing employment, typically a solitary leaf located at the base of a cake pan, proving to be ample to imbue the entire cake with flavor. Costmary is also employed in conjunction with game, poultry, and meat, as well as in the concoction of herb tea. The plant, indigenous to Kashmir, is alternatively known as alecost due to its implementation in the enhancement of ale, and bibleleaf, as its larger leaves were frequently utilized as bookmarks in the family Bible.