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Rose Tea
Pour a pint of boiling water over an ounce of red rose-leaves. Cover the infusion, and let it remain for ten minutes. Filter it, sweeten it with honey, and drink a glassful cold the first thing in the morning. Time to infuse, ten minutes. Rose tea in some complaints is a useful tonic.
A simple medicinal infusion from the book's introductory section on invalid cookery and household remedies. Two things need translating: what "rose-leaves" means, and how much an ounce of them actually is.
- "Red rose-leaves" means petalsIn nineteenth-century usage rose-leaves are the petals, not the foliage. The pharmacy standard for dried red petals was the old apothecary's rose, Rosa gallica officinalis, whose dried petals hold their colour and scent, though the recipe names no variety; any strongly scented dark red rose will do the same job.
- An ounce is a great dealAn ounce (28 g) of dried rose petals is a very large, loosely packed handful — several cups by volume — and will give a strong, tannic, faintly astringent infusion in a single pint (about 570 ml). For drinking rather than dosing, a quarter of that is closer to modern taste.
- Dried, not freshThe quantity by weight suggests dried petals rather than fresh. Fresh petals weigh far more for the same volume and give a thinner, greener result; if using fresh, expect to need considerably more by weight.
- Source of the petalsUse petals grown for culinary or herbal use. Florist and garden roses are routinely treated with systemic pesticides and fungicides that do not wash off.
- Cover the infusionThe instruction to cover is the hinge. The aromatic compounds are volatile and leave with the steam; an uncovered pot yields liquid that tastes of tannin and little else.
- Filtering and colour"Filter" here means simply straining the petals out, through muslin or a fine cloth. A small squeeze of lemon will shift the infusion from brownish-pink towards a clearer rose colour, the acid acting on the anthocyanins.
- Sweetening and servingStir the honey in while the tea is warm so it dissolves, then chill, since the recipe asks for it cold. A pint gives two to three glassfuls.
- The tonic claimTreat "a useful tonic in some complaints" as period medicine, not advice. Rose petal infusion is a pleasant, mildly astringent drink and nothing more.
Rose tea belongs to the class of drinks for invalids and the sickroom, alongside barley water, toast water and beef tea — the class of thin, warm, faintly medicinal liquids a Victorian household was expected to produce without troubling a doctor. Dried red rose petals had a long formal standing in British pharmacy: Rosa gallica appears in the London and later British Pharmacopoeias as the basis of confection of roses and an acid infusion of roses, valued chiefly as an astringent and as a vehicle to make other medicines palatable. That the book gives a bland instruction to drink a glassful cold first thing in the morning, with no complaint specified, shows how far the rose had drifted from working drug to general household comfort — the sort of thing a cookery dictionary could print without anyone asking what exactly it was meant to cure.