• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Cardamom and Tea
  • Blog
  • Recipes
  • About
  • Cookbooks

ingredient highlight: rosewater

December 2, 2017 by Kathryn Pauline Leave a Comment

I feel it might be irresponsible to start a blog post about rosewater without first saying that it must be used with restraint. While some ingredients can be poured on with more or less reckless abandon (for instance, “too much za’atar” isn’t something you’ll hear in my kitchen very often), rosewater is the kind of thing you only want a hint of. It’s not that rosewater has an unpleasant flavor—on the contrary, it has a gorgeously floral, sweet, nostalgically romantic scent that’s essential to Middle Eastern cuisine. But adding too much makes your food taste astringent and soapy, like accidentally inhaling a big spray of perfume, or having your mouth washed out with soap.

Sometimes this means that rosewater is just a background note (and your most discerning guests will raise their eyebrows and ask, “hmm, do I detect a hint of rosewater?”). But just because you should never use a whole lot doesn’t mean rosewater can’t be the dominant flavor in a dish. It just means that you need to be careful in how far you push the envelope when deciding how much to add, even when you want everything to taste very much like roses. The best practice is to season gradually whenever possible, adding a little at a time until it tastes just the way you want it to.

where to buy it

Rosewater is a little easier to find than orange blossom water. It’s available online, in spice shops, and in just about any Middle Eastern or Indian market. You might also find it in a well-stocked supermarket.

rosewater recipes

Check out my rosewater archives for a full list of my favorites, or try one of the recipes below:

  • authentic vegan baklava (the easy way)
  • Persian love cake donuts
  • Persian Love Cake
  • rosewater olive oil quince cake
  • Persian love madeleines
  • sticky toffee gingerbread with rose ice cream
  • lime rose coconut ghraybeh
  • whole roasted cauliflower enwreathed in herbs
  • strawberry rose cake
  • fig cake with orange blossom water

Abeer Najjar’s rose cardamom tres leches cake
Molly Yeh’s saffron, cardamom, and rosewater tiramisu
Maureen Abood’s ashta
Yasmin Khan’s Persian love cake

Filed Under: specialty ingredients Tagged With: middle eastern

Previous Post: « zero-waste zucchini bread
Next Post: cardamom rose gingersnaps »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Kathryn Pauline smiling

Welcome! I’m Kathryn Pauline, cookbook author, recipe developer, and photographer.

Footer

read our privacy policy

© 2017 - 2025 Kathryn Pauline