Linden blossom

Fleur de tilleul

What it is

The bract — the pale strap of leaf the flowers hang from — is picked and dried with them and counts as part of the product, not a stalk to be thrown out. The window runs about ten days at the start of summer, and Buis-les-Baronnies in the Drôme built a linden market on it that long concentrated most of the French crop.

In the kitchen

Infuse below boiling: at a rolling boil it goes hay-like and bitter, where water around 90 °C gives the honeyed green note. Ten grams to a litre of cream, twenty minutes, then strain without pressing.

Goes with

Honey Cream Apricot Peach Almond Egg

Same species

Linden honey

In season alongside

Damask rose petals Black locust flower Acacia honey Bee pollen Courgette flower Darjeeling tea

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