Rosehips

12th September 2021

Liz: Hello, and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel, we’re two friends who studied archaeology together and love history, and social history in particular, and also making things, historical and otherwise, and we normally start by talking about what we’ve been up to. So, what have you been making or baking?

L: I’ve been digging a lot of the time since we last recorded, so I haven’t done an awful lot. Yeah, so I volunteer with this kids’ archaeology club, and we’ve been digging up in rural Lancashire, so I’ve been very tired

H: That’s very exciting

L: And very not in the house

H: In that case, we can replace this section with “what have you dug up recently?”

L: We found some cool stuff. It’s a Roman vicus, so we got some bits of hypocaust and stuff

H: Oooh

L: And also some mediaeval pottery and the head of a Victorian doll

H: Creepy, but I like it

L: Yeah. I did start one project, I’ve started making the Knives Out jumper for Nick

H: I have not seen that movie, but I am aware of the jumper, because you sent me a picture, and it’s cable heaven

L: Yeah, unless you’re making it, in which case it’s cable hell. It has 13 cabled sections, using three different cable charts, which are all different numbers of rows

H: Wow, ok

L: But I’m gradually working my way through, I’ve just started, I’m just on the back at the moment, but I’m getting there, learning the pattern, and it’s brick red, which is going to look really nice on Nick

H: Awesome. I’m excited to see the jumper be birthed

L: Oh! I did also, I posted a not-quite-flosstube on youtube

H: Oh yes!

L: I did a craft diary. I am Invisible Goats. Go watch it if you want to see the things that I talk about making. Now we both do videos about our crafts

H: Yeah!

L: I will link both our youtubes in the episode description

H: So I, did I mention seed cake last time, I can’t remember?

L: I think you did yeah

H: Ok, I can’t carry on on the back of that for much longer then. Haven’t actually done much baking recently, I need to get back into that, but I have been working on a project to make myself a knitted vest with handspun yarn

L: Oooh

H: So I finished spinning the yarn yesterday and it’s the thinnest, finest I’ve ever done. It’s a 3-ply sock weight, so that’s spinning three very thin threads and then spinning them all together to make a 3-ply, so that was really cool, and then I dyed it with hibiscus flowers, so I’ll pop it on the twitter, and it’s a really lovely kind of mauve colour

L: Oooh nice

H: Yeah, so that’s drying, and then hopefully I can start knitting soon, which is exciting, and it was a lot of fun because the hibiscus dye-bath is blood red, so it looked like I was murdering someone in my kitchen. But now I have lovely mauve purple yarn

L: The pictures on your instagram did look slightly like you were cleaning up a crime scene

H: Yeah. If anyone’s interested in that whole process start to finish, I am documenting it on my instagram story, so you can check that out, so

L: I will also put a link to Hazel’s instagram in the episode description

H: So, my topic for this episode is rosehips

L: Oh, yummy

H: And I picked that because I am gearing up to make some rosehip syrup. We’ve got a really big bush in our garden which has a lot of rosehips, so I’m just hovering around them, trying to figure out whether or not they’re ready yet, but I haven’t really done this before. I tried to do it last year but it didn’t work, so this year is gonna hopefully be it. Now, why would I want to make anything out of rosehips, you might ask. Some of you, maybe, I dunno. They are extremely high in vitamin C. They have more vitamin C than oranges, which is quite amazing, really

L: Is that by weight or…

H: Yes

L: Nice

H: Yeah. And in fact, they are so high in vitamin C that they’d been used as a winter source of vitamins for thousands of years, and particularly in World War 2, when there was a lack of fresh fruits and stuff, they were used for health purposes, but I will get to that later. So, for anyone that is not that familiar with forage and wild foods and stuff, the rosehip is the fruit of the rosebush, so even if you weren’t aware what they were, you’ve probably seen them, and roses are actually related to apples. They have these fruits

L: So we’re secretly back on apples

H: We are. Everything leads back to apples, I don’t make the rules. There are, obviously, many species’ of rose across the world, and they all have rosehips, although they will look different. Some cultivated roses have these massive spherical ones, and then most of the wild roses are more kind of rugby ball shaped, sort of oval, but all of them contain vitamin C. The highest concentration is apparently in the wild roses, so the one that Liz and I would be most familiar with is the dog rose, in Britain, or Rosa canina, which can often be found in the hedgerows, although there are, of course, wild rose varieties all over the world, and there are actually very conflicting stories for, explanation for why it’s called the dog rose. I’ve heard that it’s because it’s a wild rose, and therefore only fit for dogs, which seems kind of harsh, I’ve heard that it’s because they appear, they fruit, when Orion and Sirius the dog star is overhead in the sky, so in the autumn/winter, in the northern hemisphere, and I’ve heard it’s because the ancient Romans believed that it could cure rabies, so you know, one of those

L: That’s interesting, ‘cause I’ve also heard of dog daisies

H: Yeah, I dunno, might be…

L: And I can never find a reason why those are called dog, either

H: There’s actually another one that it might be something to do with leaves, it’s a corruption of dagging, which means kind of a snipped look, different raggedy bits along the leaf, but

L: Hmm

H: Yeah, no-one actually knows, there’s a lot of explanations, but no one answer. Anyway, so in Britain the dog rose is one of the most nutritious plants that are still there in winter, and so they’ve been a part of rural recipes, and folk recipes for pretty much ever. As I said, they’re higher in vitamin C than other things, like sea buckthorn, which also contains a fair bit, blackcurrants are also quite good for vitamin C, oranges of course, but rosehips are higher than all of them. You can fit so much vitamin C in this bad boy, slaps rosebush

L: (laughs) Don’t slap it too hard

H: Yeah, don’t try this at home. It’s been used in the traditional medicine of many different cultures, not just in Britain. In Poland they were made into wine. They can also be eaten just as they are, although you have to squeeze out the insides so that you don’t get the seeds and the hairs

L: The hairs on the inside are really really fine, and that’s why you can make them into itching powder

H: Yeah my Mum told me that she used to do that

L: Or if you’re one of the people I went to primary school with, just shove it down the back of someone’s shirt and watch them get itchy

H: Yep, I definitely remember doing that as a kid as well, although I don’t remember it ever working that well for me, Mum told me that you can use them for itching powder and then I was like “haha, I’m gonna do that” and I must have done it wrong, because it didn’t produce as annoying an effect as I had hoped

L: I mean, I was the prankee in this situation and it definitely worked on me

H: Ok. Testimonial. Well…

L: Maybe we’ve just got tougher rosehips up north

H: Maybe? They’re a lot more aggressive. So apparently there’s also an Iraqi-Kurdish remedy where they’re used as a diuretic, and also for blood-related disorders. They make an infusion for things like gastric ulcers and digestive complaints in Turkey

L: I mean if I was feeling ill I wouldn’t turn down a rosehip infusion, I have to say

H: Exactly, yeah, they can be used as infusions, teas, jams, syrups, jellies, basically anything that will get those good good vitamins into you. Not just vitamin C, they actually have a lot of other benefits. Historically the ancient Romans believed it could cure rabies, or literally the bite of a mad dog

L: That’s a bold claim

H: They may have got this from the ancient Greeks. According to Pliny (pronounces it Pline-y) the Elder, our old friend

L: Did you say Pline-y?

H: I still don’t know if it’s Pline-y or Plinny. Is it Plinny?

L: It’s Plinny

H: Ok, according to Pliny (pronounced Plinny) the Elder, the brother of Pline-y

L: I blame Sawbones

H: He writes this story about a Greek woman who had a dream that she needed to send an infusion of rosehip to her son, who was a soldier who’d been bitten by a mad dog and needed curing of rabies, and she did it, and it worked, so there you go

L: Ouch

H: So it was also used in ancient China and Persia, so it’s basically been used around the world. It was used by lots of North American indiginous peoples as a winter source of vitamin C, and in traditional medicine as well, so pretty widespread for something that is so little used now in many place

L: So what’s the wild range of rosehips, because that’s quite a spread of cultures?

H: Yeah, so from what I can gather it’s all across Asia and Europe, similar to the apple, it’s fairly easy to spread all across there, but then I also found evidence of, for example, North American indiginous peoples using the rosehip, so it must have been a pretty established wild plant there as well. So, yeah, it seems to be something that can be found in some form or other pretty much all over the world

L: At least definitely the northern hemisphere

H: Yeah

L: I don’t think you mentioned Africa?

H: No, I wasn’t able to find that much information, really, but certainly now roses can be found all over the world. If anyone does have any more information on the domestication of the rose and its spread across the globe, and wild varieties of rose, I would be very interested to hear

L: That sounds like a future episode, doesn’t it

H: Oooh, yeah the rose. Because we’ve done the rosehip, or we’re doing the rosehip, but the rose itself is a whole ‘nother thing. There’s a lot of symbolism to play with there, it’s been used for cosmetics, remedies, jewellery, all sort of things, so yeah

L: Putting it on the list

H: Whack it on the list. So, we know that the rosehip is being used as food, and for other purposes, for thousands of years, because we have archaeological evidence. For example, waterlogged seeds were found in a late Neolithic Swiss lake village site, in large enough quantities to suggest that they were being deliberately collected and stockpiled

L: Interesting

H: They’ve actually been found in several different neolithic sites in Europe, and it kind of suggests that people knew that they were good for you, this was a thing that was worth stockpiling for winter, and had benefits

L: For listeners who don’t know, just ‘cause I worry that things like Neolithic are ones that we assume everyone knows

H: Sure

L: Neolithic is the part of the stone age when we had farms, basically

H: And houses

L: Yeah, when we were in one place mostly, rather than hunter-gatherers, is Neolithic

H: So that’s, what, about 10,000 years ago?

L: I mean, it depends on where, but I think that’s a decent approximation?

H: Mmm-hmm. Yeah, so they’ve also been found in mediaeval latrines, which is a pretty obvious indication that they were eaten, and most famously, used in World War 2 Britain as a substitute for oranges, as I mentioned earlier. So, the Ministry of Food organised volunteers during World War 2 to collect lots of rosehips, because they couldn’t import oranges into the country, and it was a real worry that people were going to get…that nutrition would be very poor in the winter

L: Yeah, winter scurvy is a genuine risk in Northern Europe

H: Yeah, in the mediaeval period people would commonly come out of winter with a touch of scurvy, but yeah, they organised these volunteers to collect rosehips, because there were a lot more hedgerow at the time, and a lot more wild roses around, and they issued these recipes on how to make it. Apparently children got thruppence a pound for collecting rosehips, which is pretty good money if you’re a kid in the 1940s

L: Yeah, that’s not bad

H: That’ll buy you some sweets

L: But those were rationed

H: They issued some pretty exacting directions on how to make it, because you apparently have to make it in a certain way, so that it doesn’t lose the vitamin C

L: That makes sense, because a lot of cooking vegetables at that point was probably just boiling them to death, and that wouldn’t have helps

H: And you do boil them, but apparently it’s not the boiling that has an impact on the vitamin C, it’s the crushing

L: Huh

H: Because the vitamin C is contained within the fruit, and when you crush it that exposes it to enzymes, that will start to destroy it, so that the guidance that the Ministry of Food gives is that you need to crush them and then get them into the boiling water as soon as possible, or chop them

L: Ah, so you denature the enzymes quicker

H: Yeah, so do it into the water if you can, or sometimes the recipes say to just boil them, and then mash them up in the water, so that the water can absorb the vitamin C as the juice comes out. So, I did actually track down an article from the British Medical Journal, in 1942, where they did an experiment on whether or not rosehip syrup would be a useful method of keeping people healthy in the winter, because they actually did put research into this, and they were able to measure the amount of vitamin C at the time. So they tested different kinds of things; blackcurrant purée, the rosehip syrup, lemons, limes, oranges, tinned tomatoes, orange juice, things like that

L: I wouldn’t have thought of trying tomatoes but I guess they

H: Yeah

L: Are that right category, aren’t they

H: They’ve got some. They haven’t got as much as things in your citrus category, but they contain

L: Yeah, they’re red and acidic, which means they probably have a decent amount

H: Yeah. So, the winner in all of these things that they tested was a rosehip syrup made by Mrs Leyland, who was a matron of the Islington Institution

L: I love that they specify whose rosehip syrup it was

H: Exactly. So I will post a link in the twitter to the recipe for Mrs Leyland’s rosehip syrup, which is helpfully given in the article. So, it involves 4 pounds of rosehips and 2.5 pounds of sugar. You wash them, put them in the pan, cover them, bring them to the boil, simmer them for 10 minutes, then mash them with a wooden spoon. You have to strain them twice with a jelly bag, or you can just use a piece of muslin, or some kind of

L: What’s a jelly bag?

H: A jelly bag is for straining jelly, so it’s a fine weave bag, and you put your jelly, pre-strained jelly in there and it just strains through. The weave is…it lets the juice drip through without letting any of the fruit pulp in

L: How far off am I if I just imagine a giant teabag? ‘Cause that’s what that’s making me thing

H: I guess, yeah. A lot of the time they would just be left to hang for a few hours, and everything drips through, so. I mean, you can also just use a piece of muslin, or you can use cheesecloth in the case of larger things that you don’t need the small holes for. So, yeah, you have to strain it twice, so that you get those very fine hairs out, because you don’t want to be drinking one of those accidentally

L: No, don’t drink the itching powder.

H: No. No no no no no. Yeah, and then you would add the sugar and bring it back to the boil, simmer it until it reduces down a bit, and then you’ve got your syrup. You bottle it, and it keeps for a few months actually, so it would keep through the winter

L: Nice

H: And actually syrup has quite a lot of uses. You can put it in drinks, you can put it in your porridge, you can use it for all sorts of things really, so

L: Yeah, I did come across, I think it was lamb with rosehip syrup? It was a Middle Eastern dish

H: Ok

L: I can’t remember where I came across it but it was gorgeous

H: That sounds pretty good. Yeah, rosehip syrup is meant to be pretty tasty, and rosehips in general, so yeah. Although apparently it’s the wild ones that are tastier, so if you can get to a dogrose, or your local variety of wild rose, would recommend that one. So yeah, that’s a pretty short history of the use of rosehips. It kind of seems like throughout history they’ve been one of those things that people worked out was good for you, but not necessarily why it was good for you, and that’s why we have it used for…it’s one of those things that people know is good, but ends up getting used for a lot of different complaints, because it will probably have a general effect of being healthy for you, and, yeah, I think that’s why it’s found…we have all of these folk remedies and recipes involving rosehip

L: Yeah, it does seem to be kind of a thing. Whenever people discover something is good for one medical problem they just go “ah well clearly this will cure everything. This is the one thing we’ve been missing”

H: I mean, yeah, we still do that

L: (with a cough) Ivermectin

H: Oh, is that the thing? Ok. Ok. Let’s do Local Larder before we get political

L: Yeah. So this one, I’ll admit it’s another one that isn’t particularly local, but ‘tis the season, and I was curious how long this has been a thing, because it’s ubiquitous now, so I have been reading about pumpkin spice lattes

H: Excellent. It is indeed the season, and I don’t care if it makes me basic. Everyone loves pumpkin spice

L: Apparently pumpkin spice lattes, or PSL’s, as they are apparently now known, it’s a thing now to abbreviate it to PSL, have been around since 2003, which I did not realise

H: Oh, ok. I always think of it as a part of the hipster 2010 era, but I guess not

L: Yeah, they…’cause it was a thing…the era when people criticised teenage girls for liking things, pumpkin spice lattes were high on that list

H: Pumpkin spice has got to be a lot older though, as a concept

L: It definitely is. I actually found…so the term “mixed spice”, referring to what in Britain is called “pudding spice”, or in the US is “pumpkin spice”. So the term “mixed spice” goes back at least as far as 1828

H: Ooh

L: The term “pumpkin spice” specifically goes back as far as…sorry. The specific blend being used for pumpkins goes back as far as 1796

H: I did not expect that

L: Shows up in Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery, the first cookbook published in the United States

H: Wow

L: Yeah, there’s a recipe for “pompkin pie”, spelled P O M P K I N

H: Aww. I don’t know why, but that makes it sound cuter

L: It sounds like a little baby pumpkin

H: Little pompkin

L: So, it’s a very basic recipe, because it’s 18th century. Step 1: “One quart stewed and strained, 3 pints cream, 9 beaten eggs, sugar, mace, nutmeg and ginger, laid into paste No. 7 or 3, and with a dough spur, cross and chequer it, and baked in dishes three quarters of an hour.” Number 2: “One quart of milk, 1 pint pompkin, 4 eggs, molasses, allspice and ginger in a crust, bake 1 hour.” It’s not what we would now call a helpful recipe, but that’s definitely a pumpkin pie with a recognisable pumpkin spice to it

H: Yeah, that sounds like what I imagine a pumpkin pie would be. I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten a pumpkin pie

L: It’s hard to get actual eating pumpkins in the UK, rather than carving pumpkins. Although it’s getting easier, I’m going to try to make a pumpkin pie this year, I think

H: I’d like to try a proper one. I’ve had plenty of pumpkin soup, savoury pumpkin, but I’ve never eaten sweet pumpkin, and I’m interested

L: There’s a Betty Crocker DIY pumpkin spice, which is 18 parts cinnamon, 4 parts nutmeg, 4 parts ginger, 3 parts cloves, and 3 parts allspice. It’s a very cinnamon-heavy one

H: Yeah, that’s a lot of…I don’t think I want my pumpkin to be doing the cinnamon challenge

L: But obviously now you can buy pumpkin spice blends at various big US chains, and you can buy pudding spice, as I say is basically the UK name for the same thing, in a lot of supermarkets

H: I feel like the traditional winter spice blend is pretty much just cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg, right?

L: Yeah, sometimes cardamom and allspice get in there as well. Because there’s a Dutch spice mix which has cardamom in which is used for Sinterklaas, which is a sort of St Nicholas celebration is December, called, if my Dutch friend is listening please don’t hate me, I’m doing my best, koekkruiden or speculaaskruiden, which is basically cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom. But the actual pumpkin spice latte itself, which, originally it was just part of a group of limited edition Christmas drinks, including a peppermint one, eggnog latte, toffee flavours, but this pumpkin spice flavour was right at the top when they were doing the focus groups for Christmassy flavours, and it was so popular that they actually had to step up production of the flavouring to keep up with demand

H: Wow

L: And this was in 2003, when it was just being tested in Vancouver and Washington DC, and nowhere else. Naturally after that the next year they just rolled it out

H: Yeah

L: Just everywhere

H: That’s interesting, because I honestly don’t see it being associated with specifically Christmas that much, it’s more of a

L: No

H: Autumnal

L: Nowadays it’s just autumn. This year they brought it out in, at the end of August

H: Hmm

L: The pumpkin spice latte has been out for about two weeks as of recording this episode this year

H: What? I don’t know why this is affecting me so much, I don’t even drink coffee, I have never drunk pumpkin spice latte

L: I don’t either, but I love pudding spice

H: I would smell one, definitely

L: I like when Nick gets one and I just sort of sit and smell it

H: Do they do other things? Like do they do a pumpkin spice hot chocolate, because I would drink that

L: I’m going to actually check that, check the Starbucks fall menu

H: That is one of the only things that would induce me to spend money on a large drink

L: I mean, I’ve made pumpkin spice hot chocolate myself, and it’s very good

H: (wistfully) Mmmm

L: Ah, I can only see it pop up in a secret menu website, and those are dodgy at best

H: Alas

L: But, in 2015 when they changed the recipe to actually include pumpkin

H: What

L: Yeah, I was surprised as well

H: Although, I suppose when you think about it, the pumpkin spice is just the spice for the pumpkin, it doesn’t contain the pumpkin, so I guess I wouldn’t necessarily expect there to be pumpkin in the drink?

L: Yeah, apparently they experimented with different ratios of pumpkin to spice and decided not to bother putting pumpkin in, and then in 2015 they decided to after all

H: Ok, was it controversial?

L: It is controversial, but for a really silly reason

H: Ok

L: Which I will get into. But apparently you can order, ‘cause the flavour’s in a syrup, so you can order other drinks with that syrup in apparently

H: Ah

L: I mean, personally I don’t go to Starbucks because they don’t make very good drinks as a general rule, but I’m sure other places also do pumpkin spice

H: Also, I don’t think it would be too hard to make your own pumpkin spice syrup, all you’ve got to do is simmer some spices and add sugar and reduce it

L: There are many recipes online for making your own pumpkin spice sauce, with or without pumpkin in

H: Yeah, bootleg pumpkin spice

L: So yeah, the…so I don’t know if you’re aware of Food Babe

H: (surprised) I’m not? Describe Food Babe, please

L: So Food Babe, otherwise known as Vani Hari, is a very pseudoscientific food blogger

H: Oh

L: Who likes to complain about food ingredients

H: Ok

L: So she complained about the caramel colouring that they used

H: Mm-hm

L: Because it contains low levels of a substance which can be a potential carcinogen, but is classified as food-safe, and it’s worth mentioning at this point that most things are classified as a potential carcinogen

H: Mm-hm

L: But yeah, she also kicked up a fuss about there not actually being pumpkin in it

H: Ok

L: With other people pointing out that it’s pumpkins spice, it’s not pumpkin flavour, but they ended up putting pumpkin in it anyway

H: (surprised) Ok!

L: And also removed the artificial colouring, so I think pseudoscience might have won that

H: Ok. Huh

L: Apparently it didn’t really affect the taste

H: I don’t know how you make coffee taste of pumpkin

L: I mean, it sounds like you don’t, they just put pumpkin in there to quiet

H: You add the idea of pumpkin

L: To quiet certain people

H: (chuckles) Huh, cool

L: So yeah, that is pumpkin spice latte, and I think this episode is going to be slightly short, but there wasn’t a lot to say about pumpkin spice latte, I just felt obligated to talk about it, you know?

H: Yeah, I think this is actually our standard episode length, it’s just that recently we’ve got a bit full of ourselves

(both laugh)

H: And we’re making that your problem, listeners

L: Yeah. I mean, you’re still listening

H: More fool you. But thank you

L: Yeah, also thank you

H: We do appreciate it

L: Especially thank you because we recently got our first £5 level patron, which is very exciting, that means someone’s actually reading my recipes

H: Aw yeah!

L: So yeah, we are on patreon, as Bread and Thread, if you want to support us, get access to a Discord and monthly recipes written by me

H: We are also on Twitter at BreadandThread, you can email us at breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com if you have any ideas for future episodes, or you want to tell us about wild rosehip coverage, or anything else

L: We’re also on tumblr at breadandthread, and on youtube, putting up old episodes weekly. You guessed it, we’re also Bread and Thread on youtube

H: Makes it easy

L: The branding is important. We’re occasionally putting other videos up there. I think the only other one at the moment is me making tallow soap, but others will be forthcoming, I’m sure

H: I’m gonna do some dye vlogs and stuff once I’ve got access to a better camera

L: That would be very cool

H: Yeah

L: So thank you for listening and, yeah, we’ll be back in a couple of weeks to talk about jeans

H: It’s gonna be a jodcast

L: Jodcast!