This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
April is — in one respect — the most mysterious month. Others get their names, in Western languages, from Roman gods or rites or politics or numbers. The origin of “April” is impenetrably obscure. Implausible erudition links it with the Latin word for “bees” or with the supposed moniker of an obscure Etruscan deity or with the Greek name of the goddess of love, perhaps in allusion to the springtime susceptibilities of young men’s fancies.
But “April” surely has something in common with other, similar words that signify openings, such as “aperture” and “apéritif”. In the most convincing etymological theory, the name evokes the opening of flowers that flaunt generous blooms, after the bleakness of winter and the grudging avarice with which snowdrops and early bulbs display their petals. Beauty is not just to behold, but to devour. So my fancies turn to thoughts of how to cook flowers.
Some recipes are commonplace: every British kitchen has a brisk turnover in cauliflower and broccoli — harvested when the flowers are immature. Petals, however, seem strangely neglected, although crisply fried courgette flowers have become fashionable. Cooks’ lack of inventiveness surprises me, since gardening is one of the few arts in which the British excel. They use petals as garnishes or in salads or crystallise them in sweets but rarely put them in the savoury pot or pan. Many flowers are toxic; but so are most fungi and the British have never been timid or inhibited about eating mushrooms.
Livid colours can be flags of danger but threats — to valorous hearts — are merely invitations wrongly considered; bright petals ought, in principle, to be as alluring as shiny forks or gleaming napery. In my adolescence, Elvira Madigan was a cult film that displayed the heroine in a vivid state of bilious indigestion after mistaking flowers as a means of nourishment; but she could have made a meal of them with a little discrimination and care.
The herb garden and the flower garden are too defensively fenced
When April blooms in England, “Don’t,” as Doris Day sang, “eat the daisies.” Leave rhododendra on the branch, hyacinths in the ground and daffodils in vases. Grape hyacinths, however, yield buds that are deliciously tangy, if briefly boiled or briskly steamed, in omelettes or stuffings. The petals of trillia, swirled in hot oil, complement chicken or cauliflower by adding a nutty flavour. Tulip petals have too elusive a taste to be worth cooking and so are best used raw, to splash monochrome dishes with dabs of colour.
Abundance and adventure come with summer. Roses and violets provide petals everyone in Britain is willing to eat, but they are sadly under-exploited in savoury dishes. Whole rose petals, with a dash of rose liqueur and plenty of pepper and garlic, dress pasta beautifully. Rose-petal butter is wonderfully aromatic in ham or chicken sandwiches.
There are, however, limits to roses’ usefulness: I have not made a success of experimenting with Apicius’s notorious recipe for a tray of mashed pigs’ brains and eggs baked with the petals.
Violets, which are good for every kind of pudding, are less adaptable for other purposes, but are recommendable stirred into polenta or other boiled grains or chopped in stuffing for veal, chicken or lamb.
Lavender is good for anything that violets can do and is infinitely deployable in marinades or jellies for game fowl. A sprinkling of lavender, fresh and dried, is worth trying whenever a cook adds a pinch of herbs to a dressing or coating or stuffing — but my wife’s accusation — “You’ve made the omelette aux fines herbes smell like a Spanish laundry” — has taught me to be sparing. In any nasturtium recipe flowers can join the leaves.
Petals of marigolds and carnations have a spicy, sweet flavour, well suited to white wine liquor for mussels or to the sauce of sour cream and mustard seeds that is perfect for pork loin, whether roast or sliced and sautéed. They are stuffable, with herbs and garlic, in ravioli.
Alexandre Dumas, who, I suspect, tried few of the recipes in his gastronomic encyclopaedia, added dried marigolds to his fine herbs for potage à la dauphine, with, as far as I can see, negligible effect.
Other cuisines are unthinkable without petals in the pot: it is hard to imagine Japanese kitchens without chrysanthema, or the North American Southwest without yucca fowers, or a South African Cape bredie of stewed mutton without bunches of white water-hyacinths. In Britain, the herb garden and the flower garden are too defensively fenced. Both should be open to the kitchen.
