Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice

The world's most precious spice, saffron has been part of mankind's diet--and medical kit--for millennia. Celebrating this fact, and exploring the spice's fascinating journey from the courts of ancient Crete to the American saffron trade and beyond, Secrets of Saffron offers culinary history in the most interesting way: through great storytelling and compelling personal reminiscence. In prose both refined and direct, Pat Willard tells readers about the ancient gift of the autumn-flowering purple crocus, still gathered by hand from the fields of Iran, Greece, Italy, southern France, and Spain. She also provides ancient and modern recipes featuring saffron--a small collection including a remarkably fragrant Andalusian chicken dish, Saffron Crème Brûlée Pie, and "remedies" like An Excellent Syrup Against Melancholy, one of a number of pharmacological treasures.

Though relatively commonplace, saffron remains exotic. Through its history it has comforted (sometimes literally, as a curative) common people (who have often had to gather it) while helping to make Cleopatra alluring; tantalized the highborn in the gardens of Persia; healed Alexander the Great; and driven the crusaders to battle. Ward recounts all this, exploring saffron as world commodity and private passion, finally bringing readers to her own hand-nutured saffron garden in Brooklyn. "One morning," she writes, "the [crocus] blossoms began to unfurl. I gave a yelp, and ran for an old plant saucer, and then I began to pick...." The narrative circle completed, there remains little more for the author to do except to provide readers with a short guide to buying and using saffron, a worthwhile addition. This delightful book should be in the library of everyone interested in food and its almost unfathomable impact on human history. --Arthur Boehm