Jasmine sambac

Jasmin sambac

What it is

The flower opens after dark, which sets the working hours of every jasmine tea house in Fuzhou: buds picked by day, held until they crack open at night, layered with tea until dawn, then picked back out. The higher grades repeat that night five, seven or nine times with fresh flowers each round.

In the kitchen

Infuse it cold: heat drives off the light top notes and leaves the indole behind, which reads as overripe. Twelve flowers in 500 ml of cream, a night in the fridge, strained in the morning — that is the whole method.

Goes with

Cream Rice Peach Lychee Honey White chocolate

Also used with

Sunflower lecithin Nacional Arriba cacao

In season alongside

Black locust flower Bee pollen Cantaloupe melon Clary sage Damask rose petals Elderflower

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