”The shimmering glow of meadowsweet flowers looking like lightbulbs in the distance helps me spot on of my favourite ingredients with its haze of pale creamy/yellow swiftly followed by the strong aroma.
GeorgeFlavour Fred
As a flavour there is mixed opinions as there certainly is a strong Germolene™️ scent but when used correctly it’s a great ingredient. Personally I love the strong perfume of vanilla that comes the flowers and the leaves have a cucumber like flavour so I often used for raita, tzatziki and cacik or other items that may use cucumber freshness.
Meadowsweet AKA Queen of the Meadow, Meadsweet or Mead Wort makes it pretty clear it’s been used historically to flavour mead but also wines, beers and more. I’ve made another wild side with it and it’s seriously active just 2/3weeks after infusion. It’s the same process for making “Sham”pagne if you want to look that up. Anyway it’s wild flavours, sweetener and wild yeast fermented in clean sterilised vessels.
When looking for Meadowsweet it loves a damp meadow. The giveaway red stem and a lot smaller leafs in between the larger bi-lateral leaves on each stem along with the aromas makes it a difficult one to get wrong.
This plant is also packed with Salicylic acid. Some may know this as a treatment for those with oily skin. But more noteworthy is that Acetylsalicylic acid can be synthesised from Salicylic acid and is more commonly known as Aspirin. This was done by Felix Hoffmann in 1897 for Bayer Pharmaceutical. The compound is found in Willow bark called salicin and the name comes from the Latin for Willow which is Salix.
