Sweet violet

Violette

What it is

Its scent comes from ionones, which briefly numb the very receptors that detect them — you smell a violet, then you do not, then a minute later you do again. Toulouse built a winter industry on the flower in the nineteenth century, raising it under frames and candying it by the ton for the Paris trade.

In the kitchen

Crystallise them the day they are picked; a cut violet loses its perfume within about a day. Brush with barely beaten egg white, dip in caster sugar and dry at 50 °C rather than in open air, or they grey.

Goes with

White sugar Dark chocolate Cream Raspberry Almond Honey Blackcurrant

In season alongside

Pauillac lamb Japanese tilefish (amadai) Northern sweet shrimp Baek-kimchi Nantucket bay scallop Blood orange

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