Old-Fashioned Rose Petal Recipes

The "Sweet Jar" —There are rose jars that are called "sweet jars" ; these are for the scenting of halls and parlors. They are nice in the dining-room where they can be opened and stirred before mealtime, and they are exquisite in the sleeping rooms, for their effect upon the nerves is very soothing.

As important as the sweet jar is the aromatic jar. This is made with rose leaves for a base, but it does not stop with them by any means. The aromatic jar is heavy with spicy odors; it is scented with pinks, it breathes of cinnamon and has a suggestion of frankincense and myrrh. For the best effect use the spices sparingly and the products of the meadows generously.

The old English recipe for the aromatic perfume is this:

Select a jar and in the bottom place a layer of cotton batting wet with a few drops of oil of bergamot and five drops of oil of rose geranium. This will cost ten cents at any druggist’s.

Have ready a quart of dried rose leaves; put half of them in the jar on top of the cotton. Mix in a few cloves, a blade of mace crumpled fine, a strip of cinnamon broken in bits, a nutmeg crushed but not grated. Add more of the rose leaves and on them sprinkle three drops of oil of peppermint. On this you may put a little powdered orris root; its odor resembles violets. Or, if you prefer something stronger, use powdered sandal wood.

This completes the aromatic jar; keep it tightly shut for three weeks, to ripen and combine the odor. After this open the jar for a few moments and it will diffuse a rare fragrance.

Pick a Peck of Petals

When the roses come, gather the leaves from every variety early in the morning as soon as the dew is off them. A wicker basket is good to shake the petals into, as it permits them to dry without mildewing. When you have a peck of the leaves place them in a bowl in layers, sprinkling each layer with fine table salt. Let the last or top layer be of salt.

Cover with a plate that fits within the bowl and let stand overnight. In the morning, and every morning for a week, turn the mass and mix it. If more leaves accumulate in the meantime they may be added from day to day.

When all the leaves appear moist and are thoroughly mixed put them in the potpourri jars and add dried lemon and orange peel, coarsely powdered, an ounce of sweet lavender well dried, a few cloves, and any sachet powder whose fragrance pleases you.

Cover closely for a few weeks so it will mellow and ripen.

Still another sweet jar may be made with flowers of heliotrope, petals of syringa and blossoms of lilacs and violets mixed with leaves of lemon verbena, a few sprigs of spearmint and handfuls of clove pinks. This may be started as directed for the rose jar and be added to as the flowers bloom.

When Grandma was young she was told that wild rose vinegar was good for complexion, and all through the month of June she was out in the fields at dawn shaking the posy petals into her basket.

Try her recipe. Cover the rose leaves with white wine vinegar and let them stand a week in a corked jar, in morning sunshine and evening dew. Now strain into a toilet bottle and fill to the top with distilled water. Added to the bath it is one of the most pleasant of all toilet waters. Henrietta D. Grauel.

From Grandmother’s Cook Book
by Caroline B. King

The "Cookery Bookes" of a hundred years ago give several recipes for making conserve of rose petals. The best of these tells us that the sweetmeat is made by lining a jar with alternate layers of rose petals and sugar until it is filled. Then it is tightly covered with heavy paper and set away for three months. At the end of that time a rich and delicate conserve has formed which is to be served with syllabubs or whipped cream.

Another recipe for a rose sweet calls for the Provence or Hundred-Leaved rose, the writer declaring that to obtain the best result one must contrive to capture the exquisite odor of the rose itself for the sweet. "Gather roses," she continues, "and chop the petals, adding two cups of sugar to each cup of petals, mix and pack in glass pots and cover closely. At the end of the month bottle the clear syrup which has formed, and use the solid mass for mincemeat, or to add a delicate flavor to fruit cake. The syrup is excellent for creams or custards."

No doubt Grandmother reserved this delicious rose syrup for company tea and brought it out for the especial delectation of honored guests.

Tarts and Rose Petal Lozenges

The same writer, whose manuscript cook book, yellow with age, has been treasured in one family for many years, has inscribed upon one of its pages in the delicate stilted handwriting of a bygone time a queer recipe. It is "How to make a tart of hips." "Take hips," it naïvely directs, "and cut out the seeds, then wash them and season with sugar and ginger, close the tart and bake it; ice and sprinkle with sugar and rose leaves and serve."

Conserves of rose hips were made as the housewife of to-day preserves her damsons or her cherries.

A cordial of sweetbrier roses, compounded in the same way as dandelion wine, seems to have possessed virtues which commended it to our forefathers. And rose vinegar had a rich and delicate flavor. It was made by steeping deep red roses in white wine vinegar.

Lozenges of rose petals were favorite dainties. "If you would have them, boyl your sugar to sugar again, and then put in your red roses beat to a pulp, pour in pye plates and cut in what form you please." Jermelles were made by merely adding caraway seeds to the lozenges, and using rose water in moistening the sugar.

"The Accomplisht Cook," published in the seventeenth century, gives a number of recipes for rose troches and rose paste for perfuming the breath, all of them being various forms of the lozenge and jermelle.

Rose Sandwiches for the Tea Table

Rose sandwiches were simply made, and they might well be revived. These dainties were most popular for Great-Grandmother’s tea table and were made by burying pats of unsalted butter in fresh rose petals for twenty four hours; meanwhile the bread for these fairy-like delicacies was also smothered in fragrant rose leaves. When the sandwiches were to be made, wafer-like slices of rose-buttered bread were bestrewn with pink rose petals and folded together, the fancy of the hostess then determining in what form there were to be cut.

Crystallized rose leaves, which are usually found scattered over the choicest bonbons of the twentieth century, are not a product of modern times as many imagine, for the candied rose petal was another form of sweetmeat greatly liked by Great-Grandmother. Her pet rule for the making of them ran as follows;

Candied Rose Petals

"Cook one pound of sugar with half a pint of water to a boil. Remove from the fire and add a quantity of clean dry rose petals. Allow the syrup to come to a boil once more. Then pour carefully into a bowl and set away for twenty-four hours, draining the rose leaves on a fine sieve. Next day add to the syrup a quarter of a pound of sugar and boil once more. Drop in the petals and proceed as before; the third day add sugar and boil again, stirring in the petals gently until the sugar granulates. Pour on sheets of waxed paper, and when cold separate the petals with a silver fork." A troublesome process, perhaps, but one producing a delicious sweetmeat.

Not alone for beauty or for appetite have rose blown, it seems; for rules for pomanders of rose petals, pounded to a paste, then dried and formed into balls and filled into cases of pierced silver or gold, abound in the old-time books. These charming little vanity boxes of a bygone century were much affected by both belles and beaux.