A Brief and Partial History of the Scented Kitchen

I have vivid memories of a vegetarian lunch in California in the early 1980s. A white bean soup was followed by a wild mushroom risotto and then a gratin of celeriac. But the last dish was the star of the show, a salad of tiny leaves and flowers, including rose petals, borage flowers, marigold petals and wild pansies, or heartsease, called Johnny Jump-ups in North America. It looked and smelled divine, a shower of fragrant, colourful confetti among the bright green leaves. There is a long tradition of using flowers in the kitchen, and in eating that salad we were wandering down one of the more intriguing by-ways of culinary history. That lunch with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley was an experience to be added to that of my parents’ lavender-filled garden and another flower recipe joined my collection, out of which this book has grown.