When Libby MacAusland, one of the main characters in the 1963 novel The Group by Mary McCarthy, dispatches her friend Polly to buy a large bunch of woodruff to flavour a punch she starts a chain reaction of bust-ups, involving a publisher, a Norwegian ski-jumper and Christopher Marlowe’s poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Although neither Marlowe nor the woodruff succeed in bringing about the desired end result – sex, or, on Libby’s part at least, a formal engagement – they do make you want to rush out and make your own woodruff-laced wine cup; it sounds so charmingly old-fashioned.
Perhaps that’s one reason why edible flowers are having something of a comeback in these rather fraught recessionary times – scattered over salads or used to flavour a heatwave ice cream or a summer drink, they conjure up nostalgic visions of an easier (not much cooking involved), more romantic way of life.
The practice of cooking with flowers dates back, as so much does, to the Romans, who flavoured wine with roses and violets, and to the Ancient Greeks, who used flowers and herbs for medicinal purposes; a herbal remedy made from lavender flowers was invented by the Greek physician Dioscorides in the first century AD. Cretan grannies still drink a traditional mix of balsamic vinegar, thyme and honey to stave off sore throats.
In England mixed herb and flower salads using borage, daisies, primroses and violets were eaten in the 15th century, along with cakes made with rosewater, elderflower vinegar, even pickled broom buds. Sage flowers, peonies and lavender were made into conserves, which were prescribed as tonics. By the time you get to Hannah Glasse in the 18th century, household books are stuffed with instructions on how to ‘candy any sort of flowers’ and notes on whimsical dishes such as fairy butter (mashed hard-boiled egg yolks, butter, orange flower water and icing sugar) as an alternative to clotted cream.
According to Frances Bissell, whose book The Scented Kitchen gives a potted history of cooking with flowers, floral food came to an abrupt stop with the Victorians. Only in the early 1920s did it resurface: primrose vinegar, marigold and nasturtium omelettes, and a 1930s salad of chrysanthemum petals blanched in salted water and mixed with potatoes, artichoke hearts, shrimps and capers.
Bissell includes a modern version of this salad, and it sounds almost as good as her description of the memorable dinner eaten at the legendary restaurant Chez Panisse in California 50 years later. ‘The star of the show,’ she writes, was a ‘salad of tiny leaves and flowers, including rose petals, borage flowers, marigold petals and heartsease… It looked and smelt divine, a shower of fragrant, colourful confetti among the bright green leaves.’ It was invented by Alice Waters, who almost single-handedly re-introduced edible flowers to the modern world, opening the way for the starry experimental foragers working in restaurants such as L’Enclume in Cumbria, Noma in Copenhagen and Fäviken in the wilds of Sweden today.
Ground elder omelette
Serves two
Bunch of young, bright green ground elder shoots
A little butter
4 eggs
Wash and roughly chop the ground elder shoots and then wilt them in the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat. In a bowl, beat the eggs together then season them with salt and pepper, and add them to the pan. Cook for 2-3 minutes and then place the pan under a hot grill until the egg mix is brown and bubbling. Serve immediately.
Flower-strewn midsummer salmon
Serves 4-6.
From The Scented Kitchen
1kg salmon fillet, skin and
bones removed
50g unsalted butter
2 marigolds, petals only
8-10 nasturtium flowers
6 cornflowers, petals only
12 leaves of flat-leaf parsley
2-3 tbsp dry cider
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Spread the butter all over the salmon and season lightly. Place the flower petals and herbs all over the fish. Put the cider in a roasting bag, and then the salmon. Secure the bag tightly and place on a roasting tray and cook for about 20 minutes. Remove the fish from the oven and let it rest. Serve with potatoes and green salad.
Rosemary
From Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray (Prospect Books, £20)
Pick rosemary when in flower, cut it very fine with scissors then immediately put it into a glass jar and cover it with olive oil. Both the oil and the cut-up leaves and flowers can be used to flavour an Italian soffrito. This normally consists of a little handful of fragrant herbs (parsley, dill, celery, thyme, savory, rosemary) and aromatic vegetables (onion, leek, garlic, carrot) very finely chopped, simmered in oil before the meat, beans, fish or whatever it is, is added.
Tomato and lavender tart
Serves 4.
From The Scented Kitchen
300g strong plain flour
1 tsp fast-action yeast
1 tsp salt
Olive oil
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced (optional)
750g tomatoes, sliced
1 tsp lavender flowers, chopped
Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Sift the dry ingredients together, then stir in 150-200ml water to produce a soft but not sticky dough. Knead this for 10 minutes then put in a bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise.
When the dough has doubled in volume, knead it again and stretch it to fit an oiled shallow tart tin 25-30cm in diameter. Brush the dough all over with olive oil and scatter the garlic, if using, over the top of the dough. Arrange the tomato slices on top and brush them with oil. Sprinkle on the lavender flowers and season, then cover and let the dough prove for about 45 minutes.
Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes. Serve warm.
Pansy syrup
From The Scented Kitchen
75g (approximately 6 handfuls) purple pansy flowers, green part removed
600g granulated sugar
Put the flowers into a non-reactive saucepan or the top half of a bain-marie. Pour over 300ml of boiling water and leave to infuse overnight. The next day stir in the sugar and heat the water until the sugar has dissolved. Strain the syrup then bottle and label it, and store in the fridge. Pour the syrup over fruit salads, ice cream and other desserts.
The Scented Kitchen: Cooking with Flowers by Frances Bissell (Serif) is available for £10 plus £1.35 p&p from Telegraph Books (0844-871 1514; books.telegraph.co.uk). These images were first published in Cereal magazine Volume 3
Photographs by Line Klein
