Foraging Meadowsweet

Meadowsweet is a key botanical for Buck and Birch.

I’ve always been in love with its frothy sprays of blossom that remind me of black cherry yoghurts and a childhood spent on the North West Coast. 

Over the years, at Buck and Birch, we’ve used it repeatedly, mostly in desserts where it can act a little like vanilla in cakes or cream-based desserts such as a meadowsweet and Chinese bramble ice cream sandwich with a nettle and meadowsweet crumb coating; which was pretty epic.

Whilst the whole plant is edible, picked over the summer among the hoverflies, bees, angelica and sneezewort, it’s the newly opened blossoms that, in my opinion, are the main prize. Or it would be if I was not allergic to it.... but even that doesn’t stop me from foraging it.

Dried out, the plant can be saved for use all year and at Buck and Birch, it’s a botanical we just can’t do without, featuring in our award-winning Aelder Elixir. Here it gives added warmth, depth and that pleasant , floral, black cherry note.

Its oldest names are ‘Medwort’ or ‘Mead wort’ and the name meadowsweet comes not from meadows (actually it prefers to grow in wet areas of bog) but from its primary medieval usage as ‘Meodu-swete’, meaning “mead sweetener”. Its use as a flavouring in drinks likely goes back millennia and there is historical evidence of it being used from the mid-medieval period to flavour meads, wines and ale.

Meadowsweet is also a source of ancient herbal medicine and it was from this plant that aspirin was first synthesised so possibly mead or tinctures could have been used to cure what ailed you. A favourite sacred herb of the druids.... whoever they were. And no wonder, you can even smoke it.

Rupert Waites - Co-Founder, Wild Flavour Expert and Spirit Creator

Explore Aelder Elixir