You Can Try Eating Flowers Like This

I remember eating flowers as a small child. I recall the pure, sweet flavor of a rose petal and the clovelike spiciness of a dianthus flower plucked from the garden. My father, who had shown me how to suck the sweet nectar from wild honeysuckle blossoms, was nonetheless upset when he caught me eating garden flowers. He didn't realize that many flowers are edible and, in fact, have been esteemed as food throughout the world for millennia.

Far more flowers show up on dinner plates now than they did ten years ago, when I first started working with edible flowers. Edible flowers are found in restaurants from coast to coast, featured in magazines, and included in cookbooks, but most people still regard them only as garnishes. Rarely are flowers appreciated for their unusual, varied flavors.

Flowers with a simple, sweet flavor as well as those with a perfumed or floral taste are unbeatable for flavoring beverages, fruit salads and cake batter. Pineapple sage flowers have a hint of spice; dandelion flowers are sweet when they first open but become bitter as they mature. Honeysuckle's sweet flavor is as magical to me today as it was when I first tasted it more than forty years ago. I make a luscious sorbet with the flowers, strawberries and water—no additional sugar is needed.

'Sensation', a showstopping lilac cultivar with deep purple flowers edged in white, is extremely flavorful and fragrant, but some varieties have a grassy flavor. My favorite of all edible flowers are the succulent, fuchsialike blossoms of pineapple guava, a tropical tree that I grow in a tub and move outdoors is summer; they taste like ripe papaya. Flowers with a sweet, perfumy flavor, including lavender and sweet violet, can be overpowering, so use them sparingly.

Sweet flowers can be an interesting addition to fruit salsas and fish dishes. Try flavoring vodka with the citrusy flavors of lemon or orange blossoms or tuberous begonias; the orange, yellow or red begonia flowers color the vodka as well.
Use only the individual florets of elderberry flowers; the flower stems are toxic. Coumarin in sweet woodruff's mild white flowers, a staple ingredient of May wine, can slow blood clotting; people with a clotting disorder or those taking a blood thinner should not eat the flowers.