Saffron

Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, but as it takes 5,200 autumn-blooming, purple-flowered crocuses to produce 30g of saffron, it’s understandable.

These days, saffron is rarely associated with English cooking, yet it played a huge part in the history of English gastronomy from the fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. The saffron crocus is native to the eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans and Near East, but none has been found to be indigenous to India, Egypt, the Himalayas, Arabia, Britain or America.