Consuming Passions: Rosewater and Orange-Flower Water

Glynn Christian, the author of numerous books on traditional British cooking (and more recently of a series of decidedly untraditional culinary crime novels), shares his love of the flower waters which played a vital role in British cooking for centuries.

By Glynn Christian

What should you do when you enter a palace in Meknes only to have young men in what seem to be long frocks chuck gobbets of smelly stuff over you from a pointy container of silver? Is there some plague about, I wondered. But no. This was high Moroccan hospitality. They were sprinkling rather than dousing and that smelly stuff was the finest orange-flower water. In a few breaths I was intoxicated and have been ever since.

Until bullying vanilla swept them aside, the flavours of orange blossom and of roses were the UK’s favourites in both sweet and savoury foods. Commercial production of the vanilla pod first nosed into British kitchens towards the mid-19th century and then the manufacture of vanillin, its commercially made essential flavour compound, spearheaded its further attack until now flower waters are rarely used here except in better restaurants from the Near and Middle East and the Indian continent. 

What a lot we are missing – ignoring the flavour heritage of many centuries of British cuisine that has fascinating roots in the fêted exploits of the Crusaders of the 11th to 16th centuries and thus to Christmas, the tenets and origins of which they were fighting to protect.  It was Crusaders who brought back and popularised so much we think of as basic to British cookery; dried fruits, citrus fruits, almonds, sweet spices and the now almost forgotten pine nuts. 

Christmas mince pies were much better when they were made of lamb with raisins, currants, almonds, cinnamon, clove and orange-flower water. In Jerusalem, Moroccan-Jewish restaurants use the mix without lamb to stuff baby chickens. Provence still makes a spinach pie with currants, spices, pine nuts and rosewater, just what a grand medieval house here would once have recognised as a staple. 

What are flower waters?

Flower waters are distillates of the scented fluids of petals. Rose is best from centifolia and damask stock and orange-flower water comes from the Seville orange (yes, the one you use to make proper marmalade). Walk the streets of Seville in Spring and early Summer and you soon understand the irresistible, almost imperative use of the scent in food and drink. 

Essentially, you boil blossoms in water and then distill that, something that regularly happened in the Still Rooms of both great and lesser English country houses. If you further distill rosewater, you get the more powerful attar or 'oil of roses', said to be discovered by Nur Jahan, step-mother of Shah Jehan, builder of the Taj Mahal. She is supposed to have noticed oil floating to the surface of rosewater when boating on a small lake of it (really?), had the rosewater distilled and… voila! Whatever the truth, she is credited with popularising attar, mainly as a scent. Rosewater is also a face toner; my maternal grandfather used it.

There seems almost nothing that cannot be improved with a little flower water. Rosewater makes raspberries taste more of raspberries. Puree the two together for a sorbet or for an ice-cream swirl, sprinkle fresh raspberries with rosewater or flavour accompanying cream. Early Shaker migrants to the US remembered its affinity with apple (they are of the same family) and descendants in New York and New England communities published a recipe for apple and rosewater pie still made in the 20th century. Very good with a butter-rich pastry and lots of cream. Use the same combination as a rose-custard for baked apples, in a baked apple sponge or in more modern apple-chocolate muffins.

Chocolate and rosewater are superb together but better with a darker chocolate, thus making excellent truffles. A Black Bottom pie with rosewater in the chocolate layer and with raspberries in the cream layer will have you reaching for adjectives.

Just as rose makes raspberries better, orange-flower water animates strawberries. After a private tour of Buckingham Palace with the British Museum Society (70s?) I created Buckingham Palace Strawberries. This is a strained puree of raspberries and rosewater under a tumble of ripe red-fleshed strawberries scented with orange-flower water; if you prefer, the orange-flower water might instead flavour accompanying whipped cream. That’s a combination which transforms profiteroles and both berry and stone fruits. Something even more sublime is rosewater on lychees, even the tinned ones. This has been a superb palate freshener between courses on Christmas Day from the time I first discovered the amazing affinity, perhaps half a century ago. Then I made a lychee and rosewater sorbet, which someone once said guaranteed my passage through the Pearly Gates. I’m rewarded enough if people enjoy it on Earth.

The affinity of orange-flower water with almonds and dried fruits is equally trustworthy. I make a wedding cake based on a recipe by Francatelli, who cooked for Queen Victoria. Ground almonds and orange-flower water lift it into celestial realms. When I first served it to 150 guests on a Cornish lawn, most had a second slice, unheard of, you will agree, and it was the orange-flower water that did it.

When I mash leftover Christmas Pudding into just-melted ice cream and then refreeze that (much as Gary Rhodes suggests here), I also add orange-flower water to great acclaim, even if the flavour is not quite recognised. It contributes fascination wherever there is cream or plenty of butter, too; orange-flower shortbreads are heavenly, as are madeleines.  I have also sprinkled it over the crisp skin of baked lamb that cooked with sliced orange and herbs, to great effect. 

Now, that nonsense of ‘rosewater tastes of soap’. It is nonsense. It’s the artificial scents in soap that are wrong and that give calumny to the glorious reality of the flavour of the rose, so rarely tasted these days that few can make an honest or dependable comparison.

At a chocolate competition some years ago, a brash American woman on a judging panel dismissed a filled chocolate, saying it should never have been entered. ‘Cheap soap, blah, blah’ and then took it from others at her table. I went in secret to taste it, as did several great luminaries of the food world, and it was elevated to the final blind tasting. The Moroccan-inspired balance of chocolate, ground almonds, spices and flower waters won best in show. 

You may combine rosewater and orange-flower water in any balance with one another, giving you hundreds of flavours from only these two flower waters. One of my absolute favourites is koshaf or dried fruit salad. It’s Eastern Mediterranean and thus geographically proper for Christmas. Traditionally, koshaf is made by soaking mixed dried fruits in water. As they plump, they exchange flavours and sugars and create a syrup; make sure there are plenty of apricots and peach halves in the mixture. I go further — I use orange juice or apple juice as the soaking liquid. Once swollen and tender, I flavour with orange flower water first and then embellish with discreet additions of rosewater.  This keeps for ages in the refrigerator and there’s always something wondrous as a breakfast addition, as a snack or a quick pudding with clotted cream or almost-equivalent Near Eastern kaymak or Middle Eastern ashta.  I also bake the fragranced fruit under sponge or pastry. Even if you are not religious, koshaf is a tasty reminder that Christmas has its origins somewhere hot and exotic and not in robin-studded, snow-burdened suburbia.

Countries from Morocco around the Mediterranean to Lebanon are where you are most likely to encounter orange-flower water. Travel further east and rosewater is more popular. In the countries of the Indian continent the two most common experiences of rosewater are in lassi, the diluted yoghurt drink, and in sweets. The word to look for is gulab, which means rose. It’s a seraphic ingredient in many true, layered biryani dishes such as this one from Keith Floyd, and in creamy, rich Mughal recipes.

Flower waters aren’t just for eating - they can be imbibed too… The original Martini cocktail included orange bitters but a few drops of orange-flower water give a more fragrant lift. Nisha Katona, meanwhile, makes a rose-lychee martini (there’s that sublime combo in action again).  Ditto in Prosecco, Cremant or Champagne, which leads to it as a flourish together with orange juice in a Mimosa. I’d be happy with a drop or two of either rose or orange in a true Bellini, made with pureed white peach.  ckbk offers dozens of drinks and cocktails made using rosewater or orange flower water.

Diluted orange-flower water is called white tea and said to induce sleepiness. Fortnums put ‘orange-blossom flavour’ into a tea called Fortmason. That third word is a caveat which tells you it is not the real thing, but it’s an interesting black tea nevertheless and a huge success when there are cream scones and chocolate cake on offer, particularly if rose-petal jelly is on the scones.

A truer flavour is China’s rose-pouchong tea, made by layering drying tea leaves with fresh rose petals so they absorb their oils. Don’t bother with rose tea that is ‘flavoured’. Do bother very hard to find black tea laced with attar of roses, madein India’s Maharashtra region. Stimulating and relaxing to outrageous levels. 

Many flower waters sold in Europe are Lebanese. Check the label, for just as vanillin superseded true vanilla, some “flower waters” are now made with chemicals (and badly). Prices, flavours and strengths vary, too, so add to taste rather than relying too much on the amounts specified in recipes.

Flower waters present the truest veracity of Nature, as exact and pure as the original blooms. It’s a privilege few manufactured ingredients offer today. I’m raising my glass to a Fragrant Flower-Water Christmas.  Will you drink – and eat – to that, too?

Glynn Christian’s latest book, The Deli-Detective Wraps It Up – a Deli-licious Portobello Road Whodunnit, is available from Amazon.

If you enjoy floral cooking, you may also like Frances Bissell’s books The Scented Kitchen and The Floral Baker, both available in full on ckbk.

Recipes using rose water

Recipes using orange flower water

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