We used to just admire beautiful blooms, or enjoy their fragrance – but now we are looking at them in a whole new way: as food.
Britons are increasingly taking a leaf out of the recipe books of Michelin-starred chefs and Great British Bake Off contestants by using edible flowers in salads, cakes and cocktails.
Such is the demand for flowers to colour and flavour dishes that punnets of violas and marigolds are now to be stocked alongside staple fresh herbs such as coriander and basil in your local supermarket, as mainstream retailers look to cash in on what is being billed as the summer’s hottest food trend.
Jan Billington, who runs Maddocks Farm Organics in Devon, says her farm cannot grow enough nasturtiums, cornflowers and roses to meet demand from wedding-cake makers and artisans perfecting chocolate, tea and gin recipes.
“I started doing this nine years ago, but every year demand doubles,” explained Billington. “There is a demand for botanicals across the board. I think social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest have a huge influence and people want their dishes to look as pretty as possible.”
Billington says fresh edible flowers are in huge demand from foodies because of the powerful flavours and colours they are able to create with them.
“If you use our fresh rose petals – as opposed to the tubs of slightly brown ones you can buy from a supermarket – the quality and flavour is extraordinarily different,” she added. “The number of hits to our website is extraordinary – it’s about 700 a day, which for one slightly dotty woman in a field is ridiculous.”
The potential for edible flowers in the kitchen was popularised by the last series of the Great British Bake Off – the most watched show on British TV last year – which featured a botanicals week for the first time.
They also feature in the dishes of chefs such as Esben Holmboe Bang in foodie TV favourite MasterChef: The Professionals. Holmboe Bang’s restaurant Maaemo in Oslo, which has three Michelin stars, uses fermented plants and edible flowers.
As more than 130,000 pictures of food are shared on Instagram every day, the boss of upmarket grocer Waitrose, Rob Collins, said the never-ending stream of homemade showstoppers and would-be Masterchef entries had become a form of self-expression akin to clothes and music. “Food is today’s hottest social currency,” he argued.
Tom Moore, Waitrose’s salad buyer, said: “Using more unusual ingredients such as delicate micro leaves and pretty edible flowers can turn a plain plate of leaves into something more special. The Instagram generation and restaurants such as The Grainstore in London’s Kings Cross have shown that salads can take centre place at dinner time and are no longer the poor relation to meat and fish.”
With more and more Britons agonising over Instagram-worthy smoothies, it was only a matter of time before the big supermarkets entered the fray.
From this weekend Sainsbury’s will stock several edible flower varieties, including tagete marigold, monkey flowers, viola and dianthus, which are grown by producers in the Vale of Evesham in Worcestershire, alongside traditional fresh herbs.
Like its rival Waitrose, it whet shoppers’ appetites for edible blooms with pre-prepared salads made with violas and pea shoots.
Sainsbury’s buyer Vanessa Rider said the £3 punnets would enable customers to let their creativity run free as edible flowers increasingly feature in both sweet and savoury recipes. “I’m confident customers will love the instant summer glamour that they will add to their dishes,” she said.
The availability of edible flowers on supermarket shelves should also help to prevent ambitious cooks from poisoning their guests amid concerns that oneupmanship on Instagram is resulting in the use of toxic blooms as style overtakes substance.
While daylilies, for example, are edible, many other lilies are not. Some producers, such as Audacious Veg based in London, are offering courses to educate foodies on the minefield of edible flower cuisine.
For those reluctant to shell out on what really amounts to a garnish, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) suggests growing your own.
Green fingers are not required as it has a long list of annuals and perennial edible flowers – including hollyhocks, scented geraniums and violas – that are rated easy to grow by the RHS.
Its advice includes: “Pick young flowers and buds on dry mornings before the sun becomes too strong so the colour and flavours will be intense.” It also adds the stern warning: “If you are in doubt, don’t eat.”