Rarely used now, flowers were once commonplace ingredients in salads - primroses, violets, bugloss and cowslips.


A Flower Salad
Image: Yelkrokoyade



Original Receipt in 'Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets' by John Evelyn (Evelyn 1699)

27. Flowers, Flores; chiefly of the Aromatick Esculents and Plants are preferrable, as generally endow'd with the Vertues of their Simples, in a more intense degree; and may therefore be eaten alone in their proper Vehicles, or Composition with other Salleting, sprinkl'd among them; But give a more palatable Relish, being Infus'd in Vinegar; Especially those of the Clove-Gillyflower, Elder, Orange, Cowslip, Rosemary, Arch-Angel, Sage, Nasturtium Indicum, &c. Some of them are Pickl'd, and divers of them make also very pleasant and wholsome Theas, as do likewise the Wild Time, Bugloss, Mint, &c.




Cowslips from 'A Book of Fruits and Flowers', 1653