Science
We have two sage plants in our back yard. They’re at least four years old and they’re huge and vigorous and more or less indestructible.
They started blooming early this month, and by this weekend they were covered in purple flowers. Now, you’re supposed to pick the flowers off before they bloom. Something about making more leaves that way. We don’t need any more leaves (and we’re kind of lazy), so we’re not all that good about the flower thing. But Saturday we were doing yard stuff, and in a fit of unusual diligence, The Boy picked all the flowers off. Just for continuity, this picture was taken Wednesday morning after Saturday’s plucking…the flowers are back.
We’ve put herb flowers in honey before, and that’s delicious, but this was way too many to use that way. Even we don’t eat that much honey. This was about 3 big double handfuls of flowers. I couldn’t stand the idea of throwing them away, so I decided to make simple syrup with them.
Given the amount of sage flowers, I knew I’d be making a lot. I brought about 7 cups of water and 7 cups of sugar to a boil. Then I filled a steamer basket with the sage flowers and set it in the syrup. I left the heat on for about 30 seconds (just in case there was something icky on the sage), then turned it off. I let the whole thing sit and steep for about 3 hours, then strained it into jars. You can see in the picture above that they syrup a lovely golden color.
The plan all along had been to use this stuff for making lemonade. I think it would be good to sweeten iced tea too, but we haven’t gotten that far yet. Now for lemonade, you need lemon juice.
Well, around here it’s a combo lemon/lime juice sort of thing. I like about one lime for every two lemons. It’s extra tasty that way. Note again that the juice is sort of a cloudy pale yellow. So far so good.
Now imagine my surprise when I combined the (yellow) syrup and the (yellow) juice and got this.
Do you see that? The decided pink color of the resulting concoction? I’m totally smitten. I’m guessing it’s the acid in the lemon juice doing something to whatever comes out of the sage flowers. But still…pink!
It is, by the way, exceptionally delicious. We’ve been mixing about 2 ounces of it with about 8 ounces of seltzer water and drinking it with great dedication. A bit of experimentation has revealed it makes for tasty mixed drinks too. I highly recommend this if anyone out there has some overly vigorous sage plants. We’ve got plans to try the same thing with thyme and oregano flowers if those plants get to the same size as the sage.
Very cool, and I like the idea of mixing the lemon and lime together. I often let my sage plant bloom, as I always have enough leaves, like you mentioned, and the bees and hummingbirds are quite fond of the sage flowers. I figure, they need all the help they can get.
My basil has gone crazy with flowers. I cut a bunch off this morning and I’m not sure I want to pull it out of the compost pile, but there are more flowers on the remaining plant (I left some for the bees to enjoy).
Did you leave any of the herb’s leaves on when you were making the syrup, or just use the flowers?
It’s possible there might have been a leaf or two stuck in there by accident, but the intent was to have it all be flowers (well, and stems too I guess, but those sort of come with the flowers). You should totally try it with the next batch of flowers (and report back on if it turns colors).
What a delicious drinks recipe. I’ll be sure to try it this weekend. Another good flower to use this way is lavender flowers. It turns lemonade into a beautiful pink shade too. I suspect the lavender will have a stronger presence than sage, so be forewarned.
That’s awesome – pink sage lemon/lime-ade! I can imagine the results with vodka…yum, yum. Since it’s turning winter here I think that you’ve also got your self a ready made cold or sore throat syrup for hot drinks.
PS – love your green glass juicer, I miss my small collection of coloured citrus juicers back in the states.
The basil flowers made a very tasty simple syrup, the same golden color.
But when I added lemon-lime juice, I did not get pink! Although it might be a bit more on the orangey side of golden now.
But I did get a very very tasty drink mix!! Thanks for sharing this yummy fresh summer drink idea! 🙂
I have a vague idea that there’s something special about blue/purple flowers. There’s the whole hydrangea thing (flower color varies depending on acidity of soil). Then there are borage flowers, which are a lovely periwinkle until you put them in acid, and then they turn pink (side note, they also spark if you throw them in a fire). And now sage, which are purple and then turn pink with the lemon. I bet there’s something that makes flowers blue/purple, and that something goes pink with acid.
If my lavender flowers this year, I’ll try it and see what happens there.
Glad it was a tasty experiment, even if it didn’t go pink on you!