A sprinkling of dill gave the simple Greek salad of lettuce, tomatoes, spring onions, and feta verve. Despina Nomikos, the short, chubby dynamo who ran the kitchen at the now-shuttered Greek Port Restaurant while keeping rein on her phlegmatic husband, Moskos, never measured the dill. The instinctual cook added just enough of the herb to enliven the salad without overwhelming it.

Then there was the dill that adorned the bracing beet borscht I enjoyed at Sir Nicholas, a Polish restaurant in Toronto, Canada. It was a perfect marriage—the energetic fragrance and the savory root vegetable.

Recently, my memories of the pleasures of the aromatic weed were reawakened. A plate of tender strips of sauteed zucchini covered with a garlicky yogurt sauce flecked with dill arrived at our table at Cafe Sofia, the Bulgarian restaurant recently opened in Adams-Morgan. The herbal flourish created an exhilarating dish.

The ancient herb has been revered as a tonic throughout history. The plant with its distinctive green, feathery leaves is—along with anise, fennel, coriander, and carrots—a member of the parsley family. The group is known for its aromatic leaves and seeds and its umbels, parasols of yellow flowers.

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To learn more about dill, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.