To Make Rossoly the Italian Way
Gather fresh Damask Roses, Orange Flowers, Jessamy Flowers, Cloves, and Gilly Flowers; pick them clean, set on some water to boil, when it has boiled well let it stand to cool a little;
put these clean Flowers into a China Basin, pour the water upon them when it is not hotter
than to bear the finger in it; then cover it up, and let it stand Three Hours, gently pour all into
a fine Linen Bag and let the Water run off without squeezing the Flowers to a pint of this Water,
add a quart of fine Melasses Spirit, and halfe a Pint of strong cinnamon water; add three
teaspoons of Essence of Ambergrease, and stir all well together. This is the true Rossoly.
--The Receipt Book of Elizabeth Cleland, 1759, as quoted by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde,
Rose Recipes from Olden Times, 1973 (p. 87), originally published under the title Rose Recipes in 1939.
Myth's Notes
The above is taken from a Dover reprint of a book by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde. If you are
interested in recipes involving roses for potpouri, oil, water, conserves, etc., you will
definitely want to track down this book and read it. There are several recipes for making
rose oil in the book. I will include one more below.
To Make Oyle of Roses...
The first way is, take a pound of red Rose buds, beat them in a marble mortar with a
woodden pestle, then put them into an earthen pot, and poure upon the foure pound of
oyle of olives, letting them infuse the space of a moneth in the Sunne, or in the chimney
corner stirring of them sometimes, then heate it, and presse it and straine it and put it into
the same pot or other vessell to keepe....
--Filbert Guibert, Esq., The Charitable Physician, 1639, as quoted by Eleanour Sinclair
Rohde, Rose Recipes from Olden Times, 1973 (p. 85)), originally published under the title
Rose Recipes
I've included these as two historical examples of how to make a floral oil infusion.
Vervain Oil
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