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ROSE JUICE (a German recipe)
"To a pint of honey take two ounces of red and two ounces of white roses, two ounces of the flowers of sage, and two ounces of the flowers of blackthorn; pound them well, and when the honey is clarified, put them in. Boil it until it becomes a thick syrup, pour it through a tamis, and put it into glasses. The thick sediment that remains may be also used, adding a spoonful or two of honey to it. Juices may be pressed in like manner from violets, pinks, and corn-flowers."
A flower-infused honey in the old apothecary manner, closer to a conserve than a juice. The quantities are by weight, which matters enormously with petals.
- The weights are the surpriseTwo ounces of rose petals is a large volume, several loosely packed cups. Eight ounces of flowers in total against a pint of honey makes a very stiff mash, and the recipe both strains it and puts the sediment to separate use.
- "Clarified" honeyWarming honey gently and skimming the scum that rises. Do it over low heat or in a water bath; honey scorches easily, and sustained heating drives off the volatile aromatics and degrades the enzymes that make good honey worth buying.
- Boiling to a thick syrupHoney is already about 17 percent water, so this reduces fast. Watch it rather than timing it — once it darkens and starts to smell of caramel rather than flowers the point of the exercise has been lost.
- TamisA drum sieve with a fabric bed. A fine nylon sieve, or a sieve lined with muslin, does the same job. Press the solids rather than letting them drip if you want yield.
- Flowers of sage and blackthornSage flowers are the small purple-blue blossoms of common garden sage, available for a few weeks in early summer. Blackthorn is Prunus spinosa, the sloe; its white flowers come in early spring, well before the sage, so gathering all four at once is not possible in one season without drying some.
- Which rosesUse strongly scented old garden or damask roses, unsprayed. Florist roses are routinely treated with systemic pesticides and fungicides and are not food. Trim off the bitter white heel at the base of each petal.
- Violets, pinks and cornflowersSweet violet (Viola odorata), clove-scented dianthus and true cornflower are all edible and all traditional here. Bedding violas and African violets are not the same plants.
- Yield and keepingExpect somewhere near a pint of finished syrup, less what the petals absorb. Keep it refrigerated and use within a few weeks. As with any honey preparation, not for children under one year.
Rose honey — mel rosatum or miel rosat — was a pharmacy staple long before it was a kitchen one, appearing in European pharmacopoeias for centuries as a mouthwash, a gargle and a vehicle for less palatable drugs. The four flowers chosen here look more medicinal than culinary: sage and blackthorn blossom both carried old reputations as spring tonics. That it is labelled a German recipe fits a wider Victorian habit of collecting continental household preparations as curiosities.