by Sandra Merville Hart

Fresh and dried flowers have been used in cooking for centuries, yet not all flowers are safe for consumption. Additionally, not all parts of the flower are safe to eat. To be edible, flowers must be grown without pesticides and sprays, so ask if you’re not certain about the flowers in the market.

A pioneer recipe for Dandelion Salad in Log Cabin Cooking has dandelion greens, violets, pansies, nasturtiums, and calendula listed among its ingredients.

Old-Fashioned Woodstove Recipes has a recipe for Dandelion Greens.

Early American Cookery calls for rose water as an ingredient in Lemon Sponge Cake. Sugar and almonds were pounded into a paste with rose water in the Macaroon recipe. Rose water was also used in Hard Gingerbread. Both rose water and orange flower water are ingredients in Rich Plum or Wedding Cake. Pound Cake and Plum Pound Cake used a half glass or full glass of rose water. (How many ounces the glass contained is not listed. The first time making these old recipes is a trial-and-error process. 😊) 

I’ve often made dishes using recipes in Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, published in 1877. If edible flowers were among the ingredients, I chose another recipe, but I didn’t recall that happening often. When leafing through about fifty of the nearly 400 pages of recipes, I discovered a Cornstarch Cake recipe that was to be “flavored with either lemon or rose.”

So cooking and baking with edible flowers is not a new practice. I’ve seen them most often in recipes for salads, teas, and cakes. Cookies can be topped with sugared flower petals.

Modern dishes like Rose Petal Granola, Rhubarb Rose Water Syrup, Daffodil Cake, Strawberry and Goat Cheese Crostini, and Flower Focaccia call for edible flowers.

One cook wrote of freezing rose petals in ice cubes. What a festive idea!  

Many contestants have utilized edible flowers in episodes of The Great British Baking Show.

Perhaps I should quit shying away from using them in new recipes. 😊

Sources

Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, Applewood Books, Originally published in 1877.

Copeland, Blythe. “Our Favorite Edible Flower Recipes That Are Colorful and Delicious,” Martha Stewart 2025/06/09 https://www.marthastewart.com/edible-flower-recipes-7503243.

“Edible Flowers,” 101cookbooks.com 2025/06/09 https://www.101cookbooks.com/edible-flowers/.

Hale, Sarah Josepha. Early American Cookery “The Good Housekeeper,” 1841, Dover Publications, 1996,

Hawkins, Linda J. The Unspoken Language of Fans & Flowers, Heart to Heart Publishing, 2007.

“How to Cook with Edible Flowers,” Savannah Bee Company 2025/06/09 https://savannahbee.com/blogs/the-latest-buzz/how-to-cook-with-edible-flowers.

Old-Fashioned Woodstove Recipes, Bear Wallow Books, 1988.

Swell, Barbara. Log Cabin Cooking: Pioneer Recipes & Food Lore, Native Ground Music, Inc., 1996.