Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Wild Food guide to Meadowsweet along with all the Meadowsweet containing recipes presented on this site, with 4 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Meadowsweet as a major wild food ingredient.

Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria, (also known as Queen of the Meadow, Pride of the Meadow, Double Lady of the Meadow, European Meadowsweet and Brierwort) is a perennial herb of the Rosaceae (rose) family that grows in damp meadows. It was originally spelled medesweete, a name associated with the way the plant's flowers were used as a sweet flavouring for mead.

The stems are 1–2 m tall, erect and furrowed, reddish to sometimes purple. The leaves are dark green on the upper side and whitish and downy underneath, much divided, interruptedly pinnate, having a few large serrate leaflets and small intermediate ones. Terminal leaflets are large, 4-8 cm long and three to five-lobed. Meadowsweet has delicate, graceful, creamy-white flowers clustered close together in handsome irregularly-branched cymes, having a very strong, sweet smell. They flower from June to early September.

The whole herb possesses a pleasant taste and flavour, the green parts having a similar aromatic character to the flowers, leading to the use of the plant to strew on floors to give the rooms a pleasant aroma, and its use to flavour wine, mead and beer. In the past the root was dried, ground and used as a substitute for flour. The plant's roots can also be roasted as a vegetable. The flowers make and excellent vinegar and hedgerow wine and can be used to flavour stewed fruit and even fruit jams. The flowers are also commonly cooked as fritters, but the are something of an acquired taste. Young leaves are edible and can be added to salads, but use very sparingly.

The young leaves an be shredded and added to soups as a flavouring. A tea can be made from an infusion of the young leaves in boiling water. Similar teas can also be made from the flowers and roots. The dried leaves have, historically, been used as an herb — they also work as a sweetener for teas and can be used in conjunction with tart fruit to sweeten them for baking. The flowers can be infused in various alcohols to flavour them, as well as being used to flavour stewed fruit. The flowers can be cooked with sugar syrup to make a syrup that can be used as a flavouring for drinks and a sweetener for fruit salads.

Traditionally, the fruit were added to wines, beers and meads to add flavour and increase the alcoholic content of the brew.

References:

[1]. David Evans Notes from field observations, tastings and cookery experiments.
[2]. Huxley, A. The New RHS Dictionary of Gardening. 1992
[3]. Tanaka, T. Tanaka's Cyclopaedia of Edible Plants of the World.
[4]. Lim T.K. Edible Medicinal And Non-Medicinal Plants, Vols 1–8.
[5]. Thomas, G. S. Perennial Garden Plants
[6]. Milner, E. Trees of Britain and Ireland
[7]. Rose, F. & O'Reilly, C. The Wild Flower Key (Revised Edition) – How to identify wild plants, trees and shrubs in Britain and Ireland
[8]. Streeter, D. & Garrard, I. The Wild Flowers of the British Isles
[9]. Clapham, A.R.; Tutin, T.G. & Moore, D.M. Flora of the British Isles
[10]. Phillips, R. Mushrooms
[10]. Phillips, R. Mushrooms
[11]. Jordan, P. & Wheeler, S. The Complete Book of Mushrooms: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Edible Mushrooms
[12]. Bunker, F.; Brodie, J.A.; Maggs, C.A. & Bunker, A. Seaweeds of Britain and Ireland.
[13]. Facciola, S. Cornucopia — A Source Book of Edible Plants