Rue is a very bitter herb, best added to cooking and removed quite rapidly. The better part of its flavour is then imparted and the bitterness reduced. I have to say that it is a flavour and smell that I cannot abide. I used to live in an Elizabethan farmhouse on the outskirts of Oxford and had to brush past a large rue plant to reach my car in the mornings. I loathed it.
