SC - Apicius redux

[Peggy A. Stonnell]

> It's rather perfumy, though.  Those with a higher tolerance for rose
> taste could certainly increase the amount of rose water; I like it as a
> "hint" of taste, and so use a lesser amount.

A lady in our shire has access to the apothecary rose bush that grows on
one of our event sites. As we were doing a pre-event cleanup, she came
over to us and handed us each a rose petal with instructions to chew it up
throughly, swallow, and then inhale. Whew! It tasted _exactly_ the way
the roses smell-- rather perfumy. We all liked it, though, and eagerly
gobbled up the (unfortunately nonperiod) cookies she had made with
rose-petal icing, later on.

I heard once someone claiming that our rosewater is much stronger than
period rosewater (and perhaps they were thinking of the small bottles of
rosewater concentrate) but I don't think that is at all true. Directions
for making rosewater in Markham, French, etc. do sort of point out that
rosewaters vary in strength depending on the person who makes them and how
often they are re-distilled with more roses, so if you weren't much into
roses your rosewater MIGHT have been less strong. But distillation of
rosewater is going to produce something pretty strong.

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
   "My hands are small I know, but they're not yours, they are my own"