Cooking with Violets

Spring may have taken her time arriving, but the violets don't seem to care.   They are growing in great numbers along the side of the lane, in the garden, and in Owl Wood.     White ones, all along the lane, pretty but unscented.        Blue ones are romping through the lawn - unscented.     

The white ones in the garden are scented!   They don't smell of violets, more like... incense, perhaps.


Owl Wood is home to lots of blue violets now - mostly unscented...but there is one small clump of scented violets.   They are spreading further afield, slowly. 

I have done a couple of posts about cooking with violets, using old and traditional recipes, over on Parsonage Cottage Kitchen, two clickable links.   

Even though it has been a good year for violets I'm not sure that I want to sacrifice them in the quantities required to make something special.   Maybe another year.

According to Lady Fettiplace, March violets are trebly precious because of their rarity, beauty and healing properties.
'The flowers of March violets applied unto the browes, doe asuage the heachache which cometh of too much drinking, and procureth sleep'.


The Country Remedies book suggests a Syrup of Violets - a gentle laxative which could also cure the ague, epilepsy, inflammation of the eyes, sleeplessness, pleurisy, jaundice and quinsy...

8 ounces  of fresh sweet violet flowers
1 pint of boiling water
1 pound sugar.

Pour the water over the violets and leave for 24 hours.  Strain into a saucepan, add sugar and bring gently to just below boiling point, stirring to dissolve the sugar.



My favourite book 'Flowers as Food' by the wonderful Florence White, offers many more suggestions and recipes - Violet vinegar, Salad Des Violettes, Salmon Salad and Violets, Conserve of Violets in the Italian Manner, Violets in Jelly, Crystallized Violets, Violet Marmalade, Syrup of Violets - two recipes and Violet Ice.

Florence wrote ' During my experience as cook in cap and apron from 1915 to 1921 in other peoples houses, I once had the run of an old-world flower, herb and vegetable garden (my kitchen windows looked on to a walled garden with flagged paths, herbs and  sundial).  There I tried out some flower recipes in small quantities, notably rose-petal jam, the results of which were much appreciated.'

Found on Pinterest

'It was easy to imagine the women of a bygone age walking in their gardens in petticoats of satin and gaily-coloured gowns, or at work in their still-rooms making delicious dishes from the flowers and herbs they grew'.