History of Edible Flowers

Author's note: This article contains an overview on the history and uses of edible flowers. Please see my other AC article on this topic titled Floral Themed Brunch for a variety of recipes which feature edible flowers.

"In a fifteenth century book of recipes in a list of herbs considered necessary for the garden are borage flowers, daisies, violets to be used in soup, violets for sauce and gilly flowers for drinks."

RosettaE. Clarkson, Green Enchantment, 1940

A Brief Survey of the History of Eating Flowers

The history of edible flowers can be traced back thousands of years. For instance, capers (Capparis spinosa) are the flower buds of a Mediterranean evergreen shrub and have been used as a condiment for over 2,000 years in Europe. Dandelions were one of the bitter herbs referred to in the Old Testament of the bible. Edible flowers such as daylilies and chrysanthemums have been used by the Chinese and Greeks for centuries.

The use of edible flowers was carried on by the Romans who used mallows, roses, and violets in a myriad of dishes. The English would have been exposed to the uses of edible flowers such as borage and roses through their contact with the Romans.

Anglo-Norman cuisine of the 13th and 14th centuries utilized a variety of edible flowers such as roses, hawthorn blossoms and elder flowers. Hugh Platt's 1602 book Delights for Ladies includes recipes for candying flowers. Violets, cowslips, pinks, roses, and marigolds were used as natural food colorings during the Renaissance. The Portuguese first used the safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) in the 1700's as a substitute for the more expensive saffron.

Saffron comes from the dried stigmas of the crocus flower (Crocus sativus) and is very expensive to produce. Each crocus flower contains only three stigmas and it takes approximately 4000 flowers to make one ounce of saffron. The Europeans would have continued to use edible flowers after colonizing the new world.