Queen Victoria’s Eglantine Sauce: The French Alternative
In flower, roses are much admired but there is more to roses than flowers. When they have finished showing their blooms in autumn we are left with the wonderful fruits or rose hips, which are simply the seed pods of the rose. Roses are closely related to plants such as apples, pears, cherries and crabapples that are grown for their edible fruit.
The colourful orbs (they are usually orange, red or yellow in colour)can be an attractive decoration on the plant or picked for use in a floral arrangement. As they are rich in vitamin C they can also be used in cooking as Jackie French demonstrated recently when she made some old-fashioned eglantine sauce.
Eglantine is another name for the rose but was frequently used to describe the sweet briar rose, Rosa rubiginosa.
Rose hips
You can use any kind of rose hips for cooking: fat rugosa rose hips; the skinny briar rose hips; or even the rose hips from modern roses such as floribundas or hybrid teas. Before harvesting make sure that the roses have not been sprayed with any pesticides or herbicides.
Eglantine sauce is just one of the delicious recipes which uses these fruits. Queen Victoria is said to have been especially fond of it. She preferred eglantine sauce to mint sauce with her roast lamb.
As well as serving it with meat eglantine sauce can be used on a variety of other foods. Try drizzling it onto a pavlova or serving it over ice-cream for a special treat. As Jackie French says: “Queen Victoria would have been most amused”.
Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 cup of rosehips
- 1 cup of water
- caster sugar
- lemon juice
Method:
- Place the rosehips into a saucepan with the water and stew them until they’re soft and thick. The time for this will vary from as little as 10 minutes up to two hours depending on the hips.
- Most need about 20 minutes of cooking. When the hips are tender pour them into a strainer and push the flesh through to remove seeds and bristles (which can irritate the throat).
- To each cup of pulp add one cup of caster sugar and the juice of half a lemon. Simmer the mixture gently for five minutes then serve.
Further information
For more of Jackie French’s hints, old-fashioned ideas, recipes, remedies or suggestions consult her books including: Plants that never say die (Lothian Australian Garden Series, 1995)
Household Self-Sufficiency (Aird Books)
Backyard Self-Sufficiency (Aird Books)
