I tried all garden centres in and around the city where I live, I then widened my search to include the New Forest. Not as straightforward as I first thought. The first step was to source an angelica plant for my garden. It takes about 4 days (or 5, depending on which recipe you follow). It isn’t easy and although I had fun trying, I am not entirely sure if it is something I would do on a regular basis. There are also a number of websites and blogs that will guide you through the process. I had always wanted to have a go at making my own candied/crystallised angelica and researched suitable recipes from various cookery books in my collection. These roots possess very strong digestive and antidyspeptic properties, owing to which they enter into the composition of Melissa cordial and several other liqueurs such as chartreuse, vespetro, gin and English bitters. They contain a volatile oil, angelicine, angelic acid, tannin, malic acid, pectic acid, the malates, etc. They are aromatic, musky, have a sweet taste to begin with, which later becomes acrid and bitter. The roots, which come principally from Bohemia, are rugose, grey outside and white inside. It has always been valued as a stimulant, stomachic, carminative and anti-spasmodic…The fresh stalks, candied in sugar, make a pleasant preserve, used by confectioners and wine and spirit merchants under the name of Niort angelica, Nevers angelica, C hâteaubriand angelica. According to Larousse Gastronomique (1961 edition):Īngelica is a biennial herb rendered hardy by scientific cultivation….grows wild in the Alps, in the Pyrenees and in northern Europe. In the 1950s and 60s, nearly every cake baked had a topping consisting of a glace cherry and a diamond shaped piece of angelica. Until the late 1980s, angelica was a very popular decoration on sweets and some savoury dishes. If you want to purchase glace angelica then one of the few places you still can is online, from Wilton Foods. Yet another retro-ingredient which has been consigned to the big shopping basket in the sky. Has anyone noticed that it is almost impossible to find candied or crystallised angelica in British supermarkets these days? Even health food shops seem to no longer stock it. Handcoloured copperplate engraving after a drawing by James Sowerby for James Smith’s English Botany, 1813. Garden angelica or wild celery, Angelica archangelica.
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