CORRESPONDENCE.
A DIET OF FLOWERS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "Srscreroal Sur,—One of the most striking features of the old cookery books, and cookery books constitute a not umn' structive mirror of life, is the amazing botanical knowledge that was apparently necessary to the good housekeeping of a hundred years ago. For the domestic bill-of-fare at the end of the last century comprised not only those simple vegetables with which even the most town-bred of housewives is familiar, but a vast variety of curious roots and herbs and even flowers. It was mainly, perhaps, in the preparations of the " stillroom," that most mystic appendage to old-fashioned houses, that such things were used. Those various "waters," obsolete as the " vapours " and such-like complaints that they were designed to cure, though they derived their names, "walnut," "milk," "cherry water," and the rest, from some one dis- tinguishing ingredient, had almost all a similar foundation of balm, mint, rue, marigolds, carduus, and so forth; there is a certain sameness in the receipts. But flowers were used for many other purposes besides distilling. Among those curious decoctions known as "home-made wines," now, it may be happily, almost extinct, there was "elder-flower wine," in the making of which to six gallons of spring water, and six pounds of "raisins of the sun chopped," there was added a peck of elder.flowers. To what extent these elder-flowers contri- buted to the flavour of the finished production, which was, we
are assured, "very like Frontiniac," is a little uncertain ; for besides the other ingredients, every gallon of the wine was fortified by a "quart of Rhenish." So in an old receipt for "cowslip or clary wine," as well as the cowslips there is sugar, lemon-peel, whites of eggs, syrup of citron, and, again, "Rhenish." Of elderberry wine, gooseberry, raisin, and currant wines, we have most of us some vague recollections as being among the dainties of childhood; that is, of a rather remote and country-bred childhood; but the existence of " birch-wine " is more of a surprise. This was a preparation of the juice of the birch tree, procured by boring holes in its trunk and putting in fossets made of hollowed branches of the elder; and the only adventitious flavourings were sugar and lemon-peel. There may perhaps still linger in some secluded neighbourhood a maker of " birch-wine" ; but its constituents do not appear, on paper, to be convincing.
More picturesque are the syrups; we read in the old manuals of such fairy-like concoctions as syrup of roses, syrup of peach-blossoms, syrup of clove-gilliflowers. It is hard to believe that when we are bidden to take "three pounds of damask rose-leaves" it is for the purpose of preparing food for mere gross' humanity; it seems more fitting for a mid- summer night's dream banquet; yet the product is to be put into bottles, we are told, and stored for use, as though it were the prosaic pickle or marmalade. There is another method of preserving roses which is worth quoting entire: "Take rose- buds, or any other flowers, and pick them, cut off the white part from the red, and put the red flowers and sift them through a sieve to take out the seeds; then weigh them, and to every pound of flowers take two pounds and a half of loaf sugar ; beat the flowers pretty fine in a stone mortar, and by degrees put the sugar to them, and beat it well till it is well incorporated together; then put it into galli- pots, tie it over with paper, over that a leather, and it will keep seven years." There is something delight- fully incongruous in a receipt which is at the com- mencement so Herrickian, ending with these commonplace allusions to gallipots and leather.
Roses were apparently a favourite article of food in the time of our great. grandmothers, for we also find a receipt for making a "conserve of roses boiled," and in this, too, great stress is laid upon removing all the white; in the directions for pudding-making, also, rosewater is a frequent flavouring. Next to roses the most popular of flowers seems to have been the cowslip. Here is a description of "cowslip pudding," intended primarily for a fast dinner, but included among "a number of good dishes, which you may make use of for a table at any other time." "Having got the flowers of a peck of cowslips, cut them small and pound them small, with half a pound of Naples biscuits grated, and three pints of cream. Boil them a little : then take them off the fire, and beat up sixteen eggs with a little cream and a little rosewater. Sweeten to your palate [this is a fine variation of the modern sweeten to taste']. Mix it well together, butter the dish, and pour it in. Bake it; and when it is enough, throw fine sugar over and serve it up." In this, as in the "cowslip or clary wine," we have a floral diet much disguised. Was it, one is tempted to ask, that the cowslips had some subtle flavour distinguishable amid the cream and eggs and Naples biscuits, or were they added as a delightful affectation, to give a name which might appeal to the poetic sensibility of the guests, while their grosser tastes were satisfied by the other ingredients ? This is a problem that, if it is to be solved at all, must be solved experi- mentally; but the test may be unfair, for perhaps the modern cookmaid's hand has lost its cunning in the prepara- tion of such delicacies, and we sigh for the taste of them in vain. Perhaps also this practical age, which draws diagrams to illustrate the values of what it calls by the peculiarly un- appetising name of "foodstuffs," would have but a poor opinion of cowslip pudding, and tell us that there is a great deal more nourishment in whole-meal bread; at any rate, we see it not in the modern menu. But such things make a pretty chapter in the history of the art of cookery; prettier a great deal than some other and more substantial dishes, direc- tions for which we may read in the same old manuals, "how to ragoo hogs' feet aid ears," for instance, or how to "make a pudding with the blood of a goose." One turns back with speed to the cowslips and the roses, or even to the waters with
their marigolds and their rue.—I am, Sir, &c., X.
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