Rose Syrup
Recipe from the book "The First Ukrainian Everyday Cookbook" (1-ша українська загально-практична кухня), 1929, by Olha Franko.
«Take a pot of green gooseberries, crush them in a mortar, press the juice through a loose cloth and pour it over the rose petals until they are all submerged in the juice…»
Today this description sounds almost like poetry. )) Green gooseberry juice was infused with rose petals, then cooked with sugar into a fragrant syrup that was added to water or used to prepare galareta (a fruit-juice jelly).
Long before artificial food flavourings existed, housewives knew how to capture the scent of summer in a bottle — a few handfuls of rose petals, a little gooseberry, and a great deal of patience.
makes 500 ml of syrup:
Ingredients
- 1 l gooseberries
- 140 g rose petals (edible rose)
- 500 g sugar
Preparation
- Grind the gooseberries and press out the juice.
- Add the rose petals to the juice, stir, and leave to infuse for twenty-four hours.
- Strain and press to extract the juice.
- Add the sugar, bring to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes.
- Pour into sterilised bottles.
