Potpourri

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The word potpourri, borrowed from the French "pot-pourri", translates literally as putrid pot!

In English, the word has two common meanings in use today:

·         Potpourri generally describes a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant materials, used to provide a gentle natural scent, commonly in residential settings.

·         In a figurative way, it also refers to a miscellaneous collection or medley.

However the earlier English use of the word was to describe some form of stew.

Looking at its French origin, it appears that the word was actually taken and copied from the Spanish “olla podrida”, a stew which was a speciality in Burgos. This can be dated back to the Napoleonic occupation of Burgos (1808 – 1813). Both French and Spanish words mean rotten/putrid pot.

It is not certain as to why both the Spanish and the French described their stew as rotten. It has been suggested that it could be related to the method of slowly cooking the dish over a fire for hours on end and the meat used would not necessarily pass current health and hygiene standards!

So, where does the current meaning of potpourri come from? The first known use seems to point to the 18th Century, in a letter by Henrietta Knight where she describes a bouquet of flowers: “it makes an offensive medley, and might be called a pot-pourri: a pot full of all kinds of flowers which are severally perfumed, and commonly when mixt and rotten, smell very ill”.

Obviously the content of a potpourri has evolved since then!

 

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