Chervil, Anthriscus cerefolium, is a delicate aromatic annual of the carrot family with a faint anise-and-parsley flavour, one of the fines herbes of French cookery. Its symbolism is quiet but distinct: because it is one of the first fresh green herbs of spring and because its taste and scent suggest renewal, chervil became associated with new life and resurrection, and it was traditionally eaten on Maundy Thursday in Holy Week, on the eve of Good Friday, as a herb pointing toward the resurrection of Easter.
Chervil is one of the four fines herbes of classical French cookery, alongside parsley, chives and tarragon, a defined culinary quartet used since at least the nineteenth century to finish delicate dishes, and it is always added at the very end of cooking or entirely raw, since its faint anise flavour is destroyed almost immediately by heat. Its cultivation in Europe is documented at least since Charlemagne's ninth-century estate ordinance, the Capitulare de villis, which names chervil among the herbs every royal garden was required to grow, the same list that also names dill, giving the herb a firmly attested place in European gardens for well over a thousand years before its later, more delicate culinary reputation took hold.