Cowslips
Adam mentions that there are many cowslip recipes in England. And I would like to add to that that the English cowslip is not, not the American marsh marigold.
Cowslips are chubby little plants, a thick juicy stem rising two or three inches from a rosette of flowers. I’d post a photo but don’t want to break copyright. Google cowslip and you will find a zillion photos. The top is a tassle of pale yellow bells with golden interiors.
And yes, Adam, cowslip pudding is one of my earliest memories. A grandmother had me by the hand, we’d been for the mandatory English walk. We were coming back through the village and it was announced (by her, a friend?) that we were invited for cowslip pudding. Was this so memorable and exciting because of the cowslips? or because any sweet dish (and pudding meant a steamed pudding in England not a cornstarch pudding)? Any sweet dish in those days was a huge treat, rationing from World War II still in place. I don’t know. And I have no memory of the pudding. Just of the village street and a cottage with three steps going up to the front door.
And then, later, lying on the slope that the family believed was a vineyard in Roman times before the climate got worse, sucking on the sweet nectar, watching the baby rabbits in the soft green of spring. And gathering enough to make cowslip balls, slipping a string between those flower heads.
Sounds lovely Rachel. Ideal even.
I have been at a loss to explain the use of cowslips in pudding and wine. A typical recipe is: 1 peck chopped flowers (16 imperial pints volume), 1/2 lb Naples biscuits, 3 pints of cream, 16 eggs. Even scaled down this is a lot of flowers. And they are not large or flowers either. If it was for the yellow colour, there are better choices.
However, in wine it is said that “The blossoms of the Cowslip are sometimes used to give a muscadel flavour to home-made wine,—therefore termed Cowslip Wine; but their long-lost virtue of curing paralytic disorders rendered them still more valuable to our ancestors. On this account the plant was called Palsywort, or, contractedly, Passwort, and had the cheering name of Herba paralyseos, in the Latin herbals of the medical botanists.”
In fact the flowers were thought to be narcotic; “The flowers are certainly indued with a gently narcotic and sedative property, and we are informed on credible authority that they will frequently, in delicate habits, relieve pain and induce sleep when other narcotics would only irritate and distress the patient.”
Eh, you were not a particularly energetic child were you? In my family (back in Croatia) a bit of milk boiled with poppy heads was given to children to make them quiet or go to sleep.