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Rose-Perfumed Honey
Put 1/2 pound of fresh damask rose petals in an earthenware dish, add 3 cups boiling water, cover and let stand overnight. Next morning, strain, stir it into 21/2 pounds strained honey (wild or tame) and cook until thickened. Other sweet-scented flowers may be used, in the same proportion, for flavoring honey. But lest we forget, all blooms serve bees in making honeys of individual flavors, especially herbs such as clover and sage, so you might try your State flower in the form of natural honey in place of sugar on a sweet salad.
A cold infusion of rose petals, then a reduction with honey. The whole point is aroma, and aroma is what heat destroys, so the cooking stage wants the lowest useful temperature and the shortest time that will thicken it.
- The hinge: keep the honey below a simmerRose volatiles and honey's own floral notes both cook off fast. Hold the pan at a bare tremble, around 190-200F, and stop as soon as the mixture coats a spoon; a rolling boil gives you caramel-scented syrup instead of rose.
- How much is half a pound of petalsFresh petals weigh almost nothing, so half a pound is a large volume, on the order of a gallon or more loosely packed. Scaling the whole recipe down is more realistic for most gardens.
- Which roses, and untreated onlyDamask (Rosa damascena) and the old gallicas carry the classic scent; most modern hybrid teas are bred for form and have little to give. Use only blooms you know have had no insecticide, fungicide or systemic treatment, which rules out florist roses entirely.
- Trim the white heelsThe pale base where each petal joins the flower is bitter. Pinching it off before the petals go into the dish makes a noticeable difference over half a pound of them.
- The vesselEarthenware is non-reactive, which may be why it is specified. Glass, glazed stoneware or stainless steel all work; avoid bare aluminium or unlined copper, which can react with the acid in the petals.
- Quantities and yieldThe honey is 2 1/2 pounds, about 3 1/3 cups. With the 3 cups of infusion cooked back down you should finish with roughly 4 to 5 cups of thin, fragrant honey.
- Storage differs from plain honeyHoney keeps indefinitely because it holds almost no free water. Once thinned with a rose infusion it no longer does, so this will ferment or mould at room temperature. Refrigerate it and use it within a month or so.
- Substitute blossomsViolet, elderflower, orange blossom, lavender and clove pink all take to the same treatment. Work only from plants you can identify with certainty and that are grown for eating.
Rose and honey is a very old flavour pairing in European cookery, and it lived a long double life as medicine: mel rosatum, rose honey, appears in apothecary lists and household receipt books for centuries as a gargle and throat remedy as much as a sweetmeat. The damask rose named here is the same species distilled for rosewater and attar in Bulgaria and Persia, valued for scent rather than looks. The closing digression about bees and state flowers suggests a book addressed to readers expected to know which bush in the yard is which, and to think of honey as a regional product tasting of whatever happened to be blooming.