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Herb library · Spice · Anthriscus cerefolium

Chervil

A delicate, faintly anise-flavored garden herb related to parsley, one of the fines herbes of French cooking. No study in people has tested it; what is known about its chemistry comes from lab work.

Traditional use

Grown in European kitchen gardens as a salad and soup herb. Culpeper's herbal (first published 1652) records that the garden chervil was sown "for a sallet herb" and that it was eaten to warm the stomach and taken to provoke urine; his sources also used the wild plant, bruised, on swellings and bruises. Those are the beliefs of his time, recorded as history.

What studies show

No studies in people of this herb on its own yet. What is known of it comes from the traditions that use it.

  • Insufficient

    No study of chervil in people was found. Lab studies of its extract describe a rich mix of plant phenols and antioxidant and antimicrobial activity in test tubes and cell cultures, which does not show any effect in people.

Be careful of

Cautions

  • NoteWild chervil and several deadly relatives in the carrot family (poison hemlock among them) look alike. Culpeper himself compared chervil's leaves to hemlock's. Do not gather it from the wild unless you are certain of the plant.
  • PregnancyNo safety information for medicinal amounts in pregnancy or breastfeeding was found in the sources used here. Cooking amounts are food.
  • Ask a clinicianTalk with a clinician or pharmacist before using this if you take prescription medicines, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are giving it to a child.

From the old books

What herbals and dispensaries of the past printed. History, in their words.

“The garden Chervil being eaten, doth moderately warm the stomach, and is a certain remedy (saith Tragus) to dissolve congealed or clotted blood in the body, or that which is clotted by bruises, falls, &c.”
Nicholas Culpeper, Culpeper's Complete Herbal (1814), pp. 46–47. See the page of Culpeper's Complete Herbal, pp. 46–47 (opens in a new tab) · Read the full passage from Culpeper's Complete Herbal, pp. 46–47
“The first is sown in gardens for a sallet herb; the second grows wild in many of the meadows of this land, and by the hedge sides, and on heaths.”
Nicholas Culpeper, Culpeper's Complete Herbal (1814), p. 46. See the page of Culpeper's Complete Herbal, p. 46 (opens in a new tab) · Read the full passage from Culpeper's Complete Herbal, p. 46

Sources

  1. Chemical profiling of Anthriscus cerefolium (L.) Hoffm., biological potential of the herbal extract, molecular modeling and KEGG pathway analysis (Fitoterapia, 2024) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026
  2. In vitro antioxidant activity of Anthriscus cerefolium L. (Hoffm.) extracts (J Ethnopharmacol, 2000) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026

Reviewed September 25, 2026.