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    Rose Recipes from Olden Times
    Rose Recipes from Olden Times
    Rose Recipes from Olden Times
    Ebook107 pages52 minutes

    Rose Recipes from Olden Times

    By Eleanour Sinclair Rohde

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    About this ebook

    Even though nowadays roses are cultivated mostly for their beauty, previous ages have not been so singularly narrow-minded. Even at the turn of the century many people in appreciation of the fragrance, sweet flavor, and medicinal virtues of rose petals, hips, and leaves, still took pleasure in age-old traditional ways of making perfumes, sweet waters, jams, jellies, salads, sauces, and various kinds of confections with roses. They also knew how to crystallize the petals, to preserve the buds, to flavor wines and vinegar with rose leaves, and to use roses in many medicinal ways.
    With thanks in great measure to the extraordinary modern herbalist Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, this wonderful knowledge has not vanished beyond recall. Her collection of rose recipes between these covers is gathered from the works of a variety of old herbalists (notably Sir Hugh Platt, Gervase Markham, and Sir Kenelm Digby), as well as from her own vast knowledge of traditional herbal recipes. "Receipts" from four centuries include: pot-pourris, sweet bags and pomanders (using dried roses with such extra ingredients as mint, cloves, coriander, lavender flowers, and sandalwood); sweet waters (with ingredients like nutmeg, cardamom, orange peel, and cloves) that can be used for washing; perfumes, oil of roses, and "odoriferous" candles; and a host of culinary delights like conserves (both petals and hips), sauce eglantine, rossoly, rose jelly, rose hip marmalade, and pickled rosebuds.
    There are 83 recipes altogether, including instructions on how to dry rose leaves (four ways), how to candy rose leaves, how to preserve whole roses, and how to flavor sugar, wine, vinegar, and honey with roses. Every page is beautifully and distinctively decorated, making this not only a source of special joy for connoisseurs of herbs and herbals, but in all ways a pleasure to read and use for anyone wanting the best rose recipes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateJan 23, 2013
    ISBN9780486156484
    Rose Recipes from Olden Times

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      Rose Recipes from Olden Times - Eleanour Sinclair Rohde

      GARDENING

      INTRODUCTION

      IN THE days when Roses were valued more for their fragrance, sweet flavour, and medicinal virtues than for their beauty the petals were used in countless ways. Most folk associate flower recipes with old vellum-bound volumes and regard the recipes therein contained as being of little more than antiquarian interest. Indeed the phrase Rose recipes conjures up visions of sixteenth and seventeenth century still rooms, busy housewives and attendant maids in picturesque costumes bringing in great baskets of freshly gathered Roses. It is true that many of the old recipes or receipts as the word was more commonly spelt are too complicated for these hurried times but many are simple and practical.

      Even in the days of our great-grandmothers to whom Roses were of less account than to their forebears these flowers were used for many delightful confections. They made syrups, jellies and conserves of Roses, they crystallized the petals, they flavoured sugar with Roses, they made fresh rose-water to wash their hands, they preserved rose-buds in order to have freshly blown Roses in mid-winter, honey of roses and rose lozenges were favourite confections, the wealthy made Rossoly and Roset, snuff was scented with Musk roses, little bags of dried rose petals were laid among fine linen, powdered petals were incorporated in home-made candles, rose petals predominated in pot-pourris and sweet bags, wine and vinegar were flavoured with Roses, in perfumes and sweet water Roses were usually the chief ingredients and rose petals were used medicinally in many ways.

      Think of the millions of roses wasted every year in these islands! What our ancestors would have thought of such waste it is difficult to imagine. Pot-pourris are still however almost universally appreciated, sweet bags might well be revived, there are many dainty rose confections that even the busy modern housewife can find time to make and some of the rose cosmetics are delightful to use.

      For many of the recipes dried or powdered rose petals are required and as with all flowers the way they are gathered and dried makes a great difference. They should be gathered when the dew has dried off them but before the sun is at its height. The slowest and most unsatisfactory way of drying them is to spread the petals out on a table: the best way is to spread them out on large wire sieves of the type used in confectioners’ shops. Flowers to be dried should not be exposed to sunlight. By using sieves the air circulates all round the petals and consequently they dry more quickly. It is essential to use sieves with a small mesh, otherwise the petals as they dry are apt to fall through. Netting fastened to a wooden frame is an admirable substitute for a sieve. When perfectly dry the petals should be rubbed to powder and stored in closely stoppered bottles. If exposed to the atmosphere for long, especially in winter, the petals naturally absorb moisture and soon become useless.

      Dried rose petals figured largely in the old sweet bags used not merely for scenting linen but to hang on wing arm-chairs. The mixture of dried Rose petals, mint leaves and powdered cloves recommended in Rams Little Dodeon (1606) has a most pleasing fragrance. You are recommended to take it to bed with you and it will cause you to sleep and it is good to smell unto at other times. Musk was formerly more popular than it is now and it figures in many recipes for sweet bags. I have given various representative sweet bag recipes and it will be noted that in the nineteenth century housewives once more favoured the simpler recipes.

      In Elizabethan times they dried petals whole in sand and I have frequently done this. Unlike petals

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