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Roseleaf Jam
(A Greek recipe.) Gather the petals of fresh red roses, being sure that they are free from insects. Add an equal amount of sugar and only enough water to dissolve. Set in the sun under glass until the sugar is well melted, then cook it for 20 minutes, stirring well. Pour into jars and cork tightly. Served with coffee, to guests, who call in the afternoon.
A spoon sweet rather than a breakfast jam, and the whole thing turns on the roses themselves: petals from a strongly scented old variety, grown without pesticide. Supermarket florist roses are both sprayed and nearly scentless, and will give you sweet pink nothing.
- Which rosesUse fragrant damask, gallica or rugosa petals from a garden you can vouch for — never florist stock, which is routinely sprayed with systemic pesticides. Pinch off the bitter white heel at the base of each petal before weighing.
- "An equal amount of sugar"Match by weight, not volume: petals are almost weightless in the cup. Roughly 4 oz (115 g) of prepared petals to 4 oz sugar, with 2-3 tablespoons water, is a workable batch and will fill about one half-pint jar.
- The sun stepSetting the sugared petals under glass is a slow maceration — it draws juice and softens the petals without heat, which preserves scent. A covered bowl left several hours at room temperature, or overnight in the refrigerator, does the same job if the day is not obliging.
- Twenty minutesThat is a guide, not a rule. Cook gently until the syrup thickens and falls in heavy drops; rose jam is meant to stay loose and syrupy, so stop short of a firm set.
- LemonThe original gives none, but a tablespoon of lemon juice added near the end is traditional in Greek and Turkish versions. It brightens the flavour, sets the acidity, and keeps the colour pink rather than brown.
- "Cork tightly"A corked jar is not a seal. Treat this as a refrigerator preserve: hot syrup into a clean hot jar, lid on, and keep it cold, using it within a couple of months. The sugar ratio is high enough that it keeps well cold, but it is not shelf-stable canning.
- ServingA teaspoonful on a small dish with a glass of cold water and coffee alongside; the last line records only that it was served with coffee to afternoon callers, but this is the customary form of that ritual. It is also good spooned over thick yoghurt or fresh cheese.
What the book files as "Roseleaf Jam" is glyko tou triantafyllou, one of the Greek glyka tou koutaliou or spoon sweets — fruit or petals preserved in syrup and offered by the spoonful to anyone who calls, with a glass of water and coffee. The custom, and the rose version in particular, is shared across the eastern Mediterranean and is generally traced to Ottoman confectionery, where rose petal preserve (gülbeşeker) was long made in Anatolia and the Balkans; Persian and Arab cooks had been candying roses for centuries before that. The closing sentence is the real point of the entry: what it is recording is not just a method but a piece of hospitality, the sweet that means a visitor has been received properly.