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Orange Flowers Preserved in Syrup
Catch the blossoms on sheeting and pour over them boiling syrup of rather light consistency. Let stand over night and next morning bring to a boil, then let stand again twelve hours. Repeat, then place in jars while hot and seal tight. Or the flowers may be placed at once in a thick bag, as for jelly, the syrup poured in with them, and let drip twentyfour hours, repeating twice. The flowers may be used separately for flavouring butter or sauces or as above until the syrup is needed for flavouring, when they may be strained out and used. for flavouring hot or cold drinks, desserts, cakes, or puddings.
The syrup is most delicate
This is a citrus-blossom conserve of the kind kept for perfuming cakes and drinks, but the preserving method it describes falls outside anything now considered sound. The notes below explain the vocabulary and where the process fails.
- Why it fails: sealed, low-acid, unprocessedWhy it fails: sealed, unprocessed, unmeasured -- Orange blossoms are a low-acid plant material, the syrup is specified only as "rather light consistency," and the jars are sealed hot with no boiling-water or pressure processing. The repeated boilings do concentrate the syrup somewhat, but by an unknown amount, and boiling does not destroy Clostridium botulinum spores. A sealed jar of low-acid material at an unknown sugar concentration, held at room temperature, is not a combination that can be judged safe.
- "Light" syrup is the problem, not the sugar itselfA heavy syrup preserves by tying up water so microbes cannot use it. The recipe gives no sugar-to-water ratio at all and explicitly calls for a thin syrup, so the water activity is unknown and probably too high to preserve anything. Any modern version of this needs a tested, measured recipe.
- Hot-fill sealing is not canning"Place in jars while hot and seal tight" reflects a period belief that a hot pack plus a tight closure sterilised the jar. It does not, and spores survive it entirely.
- "Catch the blossoms on sheeting"Cloth spread out to catch the falling petals, so they arrive clean and unhandled; the instruction implies a tree of one's own rather than bought flowers.
- "A thick bag, as for jelly"A jelly bag: close-woven flannel or several layers of muslin, hung to drip without squeezing so the liquid stays clear. The second method is simply an infusion and strain rather than a preserve.
- Blossoms are not a grocery itemEdible orange blossom must come from an untreated tree; ornamental and commercial citrus is routinely sprayed, and the flowers are not grown or handled as food. Bottled orange flower water, distilled commercially, is the practical substitute for flavouring cakes, creams and drinks.
Orange flower water and blossom conserves reach European kitchens through the Arab confectionery tradition of the medieval Mediterranean, where distilled floral waters flavoured sweets and sherbets long before vanilla was available; the bitter or Seville orange, grown as much for its scent as its fruit, is the usual source, and the essential oil distilled from its flowers is still sold as neroli. Recipes of this kind turn up in American books in the citrus-growing regions, and the dish belongs to the same domestic economy as rose petal conserve and violet syrup: a household turning a brief, abundant, otherwise wasted spring bloom into a year's worth of flavouring. The closing suggestion that the flowers be fished out and the syrup kept back for drinks and puddings shows the frugal double-duty logic that runs through the whole genre.