Friday, August 5, 2011

Herb Series: How to Make Rose Water

Rose water is said to come from Persia, and is readily found in any Persian grocery.  It is also said to be a wonderfully natural astringent cleanser for the face.  In France, the essence of the beloved Rose is incorporated into subtly-flavored desserts and perfumes.  If you ever get a chance, visit the city of Grasse in the South of France, the original Perfume & Fragrance capital of France and possibly the world.  For ages, this town supplied the best fragrance houses in France.  There is even a Perfume Museum, where you can see an enormous old copper contraption which distilled all types of flowers in the day.  Perfumers such as Chanel are said to still use distillations of fresh flowers from Grasse rather than synthetics, which is one of the reasons the price is so dear.

While I love fancy desserts and French perfumes, my goal was much more simple.  How can I make Rose Scented Ice Cream? It was one fragrance that I wanted that was not found in David Liebovitz’ Perfect Scoop, which I highly recommend. I immediately ruled out buying rose water at the Persian Grocery when I have so many fragrant roses in the garden.  That would be too easy!  Homemade rose water seemed the place to start, so I gathered a small group of my favorite roses, early in the morning as they say that’s when the flowers have best retained their oils and fragrance~

IMG_7757

By distilling the petals, the traditional perfumers’ method, you can capture the oils and essence, and therefore a purer fragrance with less volume.  But how to distill the petals?  Harking back to high school chemistry class, I took a kitchen pot with a small amount of water, then added the rose petals and a small bowl in the center~

IMG_7758

To capture the vapors, I used a domed lid, which I inverted over the pan of water and petals so that the vapors would condense on the lid and drip into the little white bowl~

IMG_7759

Here is the steamy little pot of petals and the first bit of distilled rose water~

IMG_7761

I came away with a small volume of rose water, which had a slight sheen of oil on it.  You can not really see it here, but this was indeed a very pure fragrance of rose, though I was disappointed the color was green…green? I was hoping for pink~

IMG_7762

The next iteration found me just plain boiling the petals in a very small amount of water.  This was indeed pink!  The fragrance was different from the distilled petals but the volume was greater. I think the distillation was still the best way to go.

IMG_7769

How would you use rose water?  I invite you to give it a try with some of your own roses.  Next up, how to make Rose Ice Cream and details on rose scented desserts.

7 comments:

  1. Oh, yes. I, too, like rosewater. You must really try rose chocolates (and even violet-scented ones) but another good use is to put rose water in a fruit salad. You don't need a lot; a half teaspoon is adequate. But it is heavenly to eat.

    What a wonderful post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow Hopflower, thanks for the tips; I will try it the next time we have fruit salad!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great post Andrea. You do fantastic tutorials. I love rosewater and lixed with the right oils makes your skin so soft!
    Good weekend,
    Mimi

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh you are torturing me. Let's see I love rose water for my face and of course in desserts (you knew that) I also love to spritz my linens with it and make rose macarons.

    Sigh. Love it all!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Laura, you are full of the best ideas!! On linens, I did not think!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Andrea, wonderful to see how you make the essence and some very special ideas on how to use it! Roses, ahhh.

    xoxo
    Karena

    Art by Karena

    ReplyDelete
  7. This will definitely go into my file!!!!!!!Great pictures.....Maryanne ;)

    ReplyDelete