Cambridge Saffron
Cambridge Saffron presents the findings of a year-long project funded by the University’s Research and Collections Programme to investigate evidence of saffron cultivation & use in the libraries & archives of the city, colleges & university. Kasia Boddy & Bonnie Lander Johnson, of the English Faculty, & Alice Wickenden, now at Edinburgh University, were the researchers.
What is saffron?
Saffron is the name given to the highly desirable dried stigmas of the small lilac flowers of Crocus sativus. For centuries, and in many different cultures, it has been treasured as a culinary spice, a medical ingredient, a pigment and a dye.
© Emily Attwood Photography / English Saffron.
© Emily Attwood Photography / English Saffron.
Today around 80% of the world's saffron is grown in Iran; indeed, the English name can be traced back to the Persian word zarparan. However, plant geneticists have traced the plant's origins to Crete. They believe that C. sativus was a mutant of another crocus, C. cartwrightinius, which was selected for its distinctively elongated crimson stigmas. Unlike cartwrightinius, sativus is sterile and does not produce seeds so it needs to be reproduced vegetatively, by regularly digging up the corms and separating off the baby corms for replanting.
A woman picking Crocus cartwrightinius on a rocky hillside. Wall painting, Xestes 3, Akrotiri, Thera (Santorini). C. 3000-1100 BCE. © Luisa Ricciarini / Bridgeman Images.
A woman picking Crocus cartwrightinius on a rocky hillside. Wall painting, Xestes 3, Akrotiri, Thera (Santorini). C. 3000-1100 BCE. © Luisa Ricciarini / Bridgeman Images.
Illustration in Taqwīm as‑Siḥḥa (Maintenance of Health), an 11thc Arab medical treatise, translated into Latin as Tacuinum Sanitatis. © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Ser. n. 2644, fol. 40v.
Illustration in Taqwīm as‑Siḥḥa (Maintenance of Health), an 11thc Arab medical treatise, translated into Latin as Tacuinum Sanitatis. © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Ser. n. 2644, fol. 40v.
Harvesting the stigmas is a laborious process, one that hasn't changed much since ancient times. As each flower begins to open, it must be handpicked and the stigmas severed; a finicky job often delegated to women. To avoid the colour and flavour fading, the stigmas then need to be dried very quickly (a process which reduces their weight by about 80%).
A yellow colour (possibly saffron) has seeped through this woollen pouch, from the 3rd or 4th century. It was recovered from Loulan, an important city on the Silk Road. Stein Textile Loan Collection. On loan from the Government of India and the Archaeological Survey of India. © Victoria and Albert Museum/Government of India.
A yellow colour (possibly saffron) has seeped through this woollen pouch, from the 3rd or 4th century. It was recovered from Loulan, an important city on the Silk Road. Stein Textile Loan Collection. On loan from the Government of India and the Archaeological Survey of India. © Victoria and Albert Museum/Government of India.
The saffron crocus, which flowers in the autumn, is often confused with spring-flowering crocuses, such as Crocus flavus below.
Crocus sativus is compared to Crocus flavus by Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt and Elias Berhulst in Album met bloemen (1596-1610). © Rijksmuseum.
Crocus sativus is compared to Crocus flavus by Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt and Elias Berhulst in Album met bloemen (1596-1610). © Rijksmuseum.
A more common and dangerous confusion is between the saffron crocus and another autumn-flowering plant, Colchicum autumnale, sometimes known as 'meadow saffron' but highly poisonous. This image shows sketches of both (the saffron is on the left) in a notebook owned by Saffron Walden archivist George Nathan Maynard. Also included is a newspaper clipping (dated 1898) that discusses the differences between them, and a dried and pressed specimen of sativus. Note how the saffron stigmas are not only darker and longer than those of the colchicum; as John Norden noted in 1594, one of their most distinctive features is how visibly they protude beyond the hearte of the flowre.
Colchicum autumnale growing in the Selwyn College gardens, October 2022.
Colchicum autumnale growing in the Selwyn College gardens, October 2022.
A specimen of Crocus sativus from John Lindley's herbarium. CGE00046612 © Cambridge University Herbarium (CGE).
A specimen of Crocus sativus from John Lindley's herbarium. CGE00046612 © Cambridge University Herbarium (CGE).
One of the largest collections of pressed and dried plant specimens in the UK, the University Herbarium holds an estimated 1.1 million plant specimens which are stored, catalogued, and arranged by family, genus and species. There are only a few examples of Crocus sativus, however, perhaps because by the time it was established in 1761, interest in the plant was beginning to wane.
Some of the most interesting sativus specimens are in collections purchased in the nineteenth century by Charles Babington, the University's fifth professor of botany. One is from the herbarium of John Lindley, a botanist and Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society. The colour is well preserved here: the dark red of the long stigmas can still be seen, distinct from the even longer green leaves which surround them.
The specimens below, from the herbarium of the French pharmacist and botanist Leon Gaston Genevier, further demonstrate the structure of the plant.
A specimen of Crocus sativus from Leon Gaston Genevier's herbarium. CGE00046611. © Cambridge University Herbarium (CGE).
A specimen of Crocus sativus from Leon Gaston Genevier's herbarium. CGE00046611. © Cambridge University Herbarium (CGE).
CULTIVATING THE CROCUSES
Like many foreign plants imported into Britain, saffron was first cultivated in monastery gardens - such as the infirmary garden at Norwich Cathedral Priory - and it was well established in the east of England by the end of the fourteenth century.
We know a lot about how saffron was cultivated over the next few hundred years because detailed instructions for its cultivation, processing and use were recorded, first in manuscripts and then in printed works.
The first known account of how to grow and harvest the crocuses in Britain is Master Jon Gardener's 1440s verse treatise The Feate of Gardeninge, a version of which exists in a commonplace book in the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge. Gardener's instructions are precise:
Of saffron we must tell
He shall be kept fair & well
Saffron will have woust lesyng’
Beds I made well with dung
Forsooth if they shall bear
They would be set in the Month of September
Three days before Saint Mary day Nativity
Other the next woke thereafter so must I the
With a dibble thou shall them set
That the dibble before be blunt & great
Three inches deep they must set be
And thus said Master Ion Gardener to me.
In Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557), Thomas Tusser also used rhyming couplets to make his instructions easier to remember for the literate and illiterate alike. Tusser recommends preparing the saffron plot between the two "Lady" days, that is, between days celebrating St Mary Magdalene (22 July) and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin (15 August):
Pare saffron plot,
forget it not.
His dwelling made trim
loke shortly for him.
When haruest is gon,
then saffron comes on.
Harvest Time
A little of ground
brings saffron a pound.
When the crocuses come into flower in October or November, the tiny flowers have to be quickly gathered by hand and the even smaller stigmas harvested. Even though we're talking about small pieces of land - Tusser speaks of 20 square foot and others specify a rood (a quarter of an acre) - there was a huge amount of concentrated work for crocus-pickers (‘crokers’) over the course of 3-4 weeks. It takes about 200,000 flowers, and more than 400 hours of labour, to produce a kilogram of saffron. In 1732 it was estimated that labour comprises 75% of the cost of saffron production. That's why smallholders, who relied on unpaid family labour, could make a profit, as Rowland Parker notes in his book on Foxton.
Three years of saffron
In A Description and History of England (1577), William Harrison, rector of Radwinter, a village between Haverhill and Saffron Walden, made a distinction between the age of the saffron. The first year's crop was small but of excellent quality - he calls it saffron du hort and says it was the best for medicine - with the yield increasing in the second and third year. Bequests from this period often mention the age of the plot: for example, 1 rood of saffron of two years set. After three years, the corms would be lifted and replanted elsewhere; the land was then used for other purposes for up to 20 years before another saffron planting was attempted.
Rewards, and Risks
Saffron was a valuable crop and a lot of attention was paid to protecting the crocuses from predators and disease.
One problem was the constant weeding so that, as Harrison said, nothing may annoy the flower whenas his time doth come to rise. Harrison also stressed the need to keep cows and hares away from the grass-like leaves that developed after the plants had flowered. In Crocologia (1671), the German physician Johann Hertodt also pointed out the appeal of the corms for mice and moles.
But perhaps the biggest threat was the weather. In 1607, for example, Ickleton parish recorded a great froste of long continewance which stayed ye plowes 13 weks and more and presently after all the corn was deare and all saffron heades rotten.
And in the 1720s, Duhamel du Monceau identified a fungal infection as the reason the saffron crop failed in Gâtinais, south east of Paris. Although his suggested remedy was to peel the corms and expose them to sunlight, his notes were accompanied by a drawing which offers an alternative treatment: a good wash from a putto!
Disposing of the Dross
Once the stigma had been removed, the flowers were discarded. French farmers fed them to their cows but in Essex, Harrison noted, they were usually just thrown into the dunghill. Some were less careful. In 1533 the Linton manor court fined several men for throwing ‘Saffron Flowres & le drose’ on to the main road, and in Saffron Walden in 1574, after discarded flowers clogged up the River Slade, a decree was issued announcing that further miscreants would be punished by two days and nights in the stocks. Today, some saffron growers 'upcycle' by partnering with skincare producers who use the flowers in soaps and serums.
Drying the threads
Keepe colour in dreing,
well vsed woorth buieng.
To preserve the colour and flavour, the stigma must be dried immediately without damage. In Iran and Morocco, they were traditionally air-dried in the shade; in Spain, they were placed in mesh trays over charcoal; in East Anglia, a kiln was used. The threads or chives were either sold as hay saffron or pressed between weighted boards and made into a cake.
The kiln was a delicate instrument, for the saffron could easily be scorched and spoilt. Kiln design therefore required constant refinement. In the winter of 1663, the chemist Charles Howard addressed the Royal Society three times on the subject. On the last occasion, 9 December, he donated his latest design along with a cake of dried saffron to the Society. In March 1678 he revisited the subject in an article for the Society's Philosophical Transactions, in which he once more offered precise advice on the kiln's optimal materials and construction.
Richard Bradley, who supplemented his income as Cambridge's first Professor of Botany by writing popular manuals, also had views on the subject. In The Country Gentleman and Farmer's Monthly Director (1726), he described his survey of kilns in South Cambridgeshire, noting that they could be found in almost all the poor Peoples House in the Saffron Countries. But the unskilfulness of the dryers and the poor design of the kilns frustrated him. He did find one Saffron Kiln of the best sort, however. Broke as usual, he had the kiln brought to London, to the Four Swans pub in Bishopgate Street, and wrote to Sir Hans Sloane offering to sell it; I think it would do well at the Royal Society as a pattern for those who Cultivate Saffron in the west or south parts, he insisted. The Royal Society was certainly interested in kiln design, but it is not known whether Sloane ever sent for Bradley's model.
Identifying a Fake
It was, and still is, risky to buy saffron, as unscrupulous traders do their best to fake the 'red gold'. This was easiest with the powdered form, when turmeric or the ground-up petals of calendula or safflower (a.k.a. “bastard saffron”) could be mixed in. The threads, meanwhile, were bulked out with all manner of things - from the crocus's own styles and stamens to pomegranate or beef fibres, scrapings of brazil nuts, and even dyed strips of paper, silk and horsehair! Sometimes the weight was increased by storing the saffron in a damp place, or moistening it with butter, honey, oil or glycerine. Back in the first century, Pliny the Elder recommended two tests: pressing the threads to see if they crackle (for moistened saffron makes no noise) and touching the spice and then your face - if it’s genuine, you should feel a slight stinging.
St Fiacre, gardening. Raphael Sadeler, engraving after Maarten de Vos, Oraculum Anachoreticum plate 18, Venice, 1595-1600. © Trustees of the British Museum.
St Fiacre, gardening. Raphael Sadeler, engraving after Maarten de Vos, Oraculum Anachoreticum plate 18, Venice, 1595-1600. © Trustees of the British Museum.
Jon Gardener's instructions for growing saffron, 1440s. © Trinity College, Cambridge, O.9.38, f.18.
Jon Gardener's instructions for growing saffron, 1440s. © Trinity College, Cambridge, O.9.38, f.18.
The title page of Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, © Cambridge University Library,
The title page of Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, © Cambridge University Library,
Planting saffron corms at Bridge End Gardens, Saffron Walden. © Emily Attwood Photography / English Saffron.
Planting saffron corms at Bridge End Gardens, Saffron Walden. © Emily Attwood Photography / English Saffron.
Some months later....© Emily Attwood Photography / English Saffron.
Some months later....© Emily Attwood Photography / English Saffron.
Some months later....© Emily Attwood Photography / English Saffron.
Some months later....© Emily Attwood Photography / English Saffron.
Putto Washing Bulb, artist unknown, c. 1728, from the papers of Duhamel du Monceau. © American Philosophical Society.
Putto Washing Bulb, artist unknown, c. 1728, from the papers of Duhamel du Monceau. © American Philosophical Society.
Sally Francis, proprietor of Norfolk Saffron, harvesting the saffron threads. October 2022. © Norfolk Saffron
Sally Francis, proprietor of Norfolk Saffron, harvesting the saffron threads. October 2022. © Norfolk Saffron
Drawing of a kiln and shovel to process saffron in a paper by Charles Howard read before the Royal Society on 9 December 1663. © Royal Society.
Drawing of a kiln and shovel to process saffron in a paper by Charles Howard read before the Royal Society on 9 December 1663. © Royal Society.
From a page of Liber privilegiorum et libertatum alme universitatis Cantebrigiensis, c. 1590, showing the vice-Chancellor, three beadles and other university officials supervising the inspection of weights and measures © Cambridge University Library, UA Hare A.1, f.276v.
From a page of Liber privilegiorum et libertatum alme universitatis Cantebrigiensis, c. 1590, showing the vice-Chancellor, three beadles and other university officials supervising the inspection of weights and measures © Cambridge University Library, UA Hare A.1, f.276v.
Saffron in Cambridgeshire and Essex
Saffron was common throughout the Roman empire, but fell out of use in Europe until the Arab conquest of the Iberian peninsula. In Britain, the wealthy imported saffron from Spain until sometime in the 14th century, when it began to be cultivated locally.
Although evidence of saffron growing can be found in many parts of England (the Herbarium has a specimen from Chester), the area which came to specialise in its commercial production was north-west Essex and south Cambridgeshire.
Saffron was always a cash crop, supplementary to staples such as corn and barley. It was sometimes grown in open fields, as in this image of Whittlesford, but also at the edges of fields, in gardens, and in small enclosures on common land. The impact of saffron on people's livelihoods is evident in the fact that during Kett's Rebellion in 1549, protesters against Norfolk land enclosure argued for an exemption for 'sefren grounds' already planted.
Saffron Walden
Today, if we think of saffron as a local industry, it is probably in connection with the Essex town of Walden, whose change of name in the 1540s was a recognition of the crocus's contribution to its wealth. In 1549, the new town seal featured three plants growing within the battlements - saffron walled-in, a visual pun that has been repeated and refined for centuries - and in 1662, Thomas Fuller refered to the town as a fair market town which saffron may seem to have coloured with the name thereof.
The charter granted to the Guild of Holy Trinity in 1514 by Henry VIII can be seen in the Saffron Walden Museum. The left and right sides of the illuminated border acknowledge the crocus's importance to the town. © Saffron Walden Town Council & Saffron Walden Museum.
The charter granted to the Guild of Holy Trinity in 1514 by Henry VIII can be seen in the Saffron Walden Museum. The left and right sides of the illuminated border acknowledge the crocus's importance to the town. © Saffron Walden Town Council & Saffron Walden Museum.
But harvests, and therefore prices, fluctuated greatly. In 1577, William Harrison remembered the glut of 1556:
Soche was the plenty of Saffron in this yere, that the murmuring Crokers envieng the store, said in blasphemous maner, in & aboute Waldon in Essex, that “God did now shite saffron”; but as some of them died afterward, starke beggars, so in 20 yeres after, there was so little of this Commodity, that it was almost lost & perished in England....
But the industry revived, and in 1654 John Evelyn declared that the town's crop was esteemed the best of any foreign country.
St Mary the Virgin Church, Saffron Walden, was founded in 1250. Work on rebuilding the aisles and nave began in 1430.
St Mary the Virgin Church, Saffron Walden, was founded in 1250. Work on rebuilding the aisles and nave began in 1430.
A tribute to the saffron crocus in the spandrels of the South Aisle arcade, opposite the South Porch.
A tribute to the saffron crocus in the spandrels of the South Aisle arcade, opposite the South Porch.
Walden's history can also be seen in the crocus motifs that appear in the pargetting, or decorative plastering, of its pubs and cottages. Pargetting is a distinctive feature of Essex and Suffolk architecture.
Saffron Walden Town Hall, September 2022.
Saffron Walden Town Hall, September 2022.
Saffron is walled in more elaborately on this 19th century plaque on a wall of the Edward VI almshouses.
Saffron is walled in more elaborately on this 19th century plaque on a wall of the Edward VI almshouses.
A detail of pargetting on Dolphin House, which was refronted c. 1700. Gold Street, Saffron Walden.
A detail of pargetting on Dolphin House, which was refronted c. 1700. Gold Street, Saffron Walden.
Part of a pargetting design of flowers and fruit from a weaver's house, 1600s, on display at the Saffron Walden Museum.
Part of a pargetting design of flowers and fruit from a weaver's house, 1600s, on display at the Saffron Walden Museum.
Wooden pargetting stamp featuring a crocus and a scallop (the symbol of St James), used to stamp decorative patterns into external plasterwork. Probably late 19th century. © Saffron Walden Museum.
Wooden pargetting stamp featuring a crocus and a scallop (the symbol of St James), used to stamp decorative patterns into external plasterwork. Probably late 19th century. © Saffron Walden Museum.
Less well known is the extent to which saffron was cultivated further afield; particularly in the corridor between Saffron Walden and Cambridge, an area known for its free-draining, mean and chalkie ground, but also further south and north. Only traces of this history remain. Consider Histon, north of Cambridge. Due to the success of the Chivers brothers and other market gardeners in the 19th century and beyond, the village is known for its many fruit trees. One street sign, however, points to an earlier crop.
Much of the land used to cultivate saffron was owned by priories, rectories, vicarages and Cambridge colleges, and saffron was included in the tithes paid by their tenants. Indeed, records of tithes paid or disputed, and bequests of corms and 'saffron grounds' by vicars, husbandmen, grocers, and carpenters, provide most of the evidence for saffron in region.
This document records an agreement made on 1 November 1593, that Thomas Greathead and George Roger, of Grantchester, would deliver 10lb of English saffron to Peter Baron at St Edward's church in a year's time. The payment was £11 10s.
© Cambridge University Library.
© Cambridge University Library.
The historian Joan Thirsk has tracked the establishment of saffron through its appearance in wills: in 1665-90, only 7% of probate inventories in Cambridgeshire refer it; in 1691-1700, that increases to 20%; and in 1711-30, to 24%. So saffron was an 'expanding enterprise' quite late into the 18th century.
Scroll through this map to find further saffron stories in parishes throughout south Cambridgeshire and north-west Essex.
Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Maps.34.018.7 (1913), OS England and Wales 4 miles to 1 inch, 1913.
On 10 Nov. 1581 John Newman of Shelford appeared before the Vice Chancellor’s court, charged with debt of £8 6s 8d for 20lbs of saffron which he had failed to deliver to Richard Newman of Thriplow.
A document from 1593 records Thomas Greathead and George Roger, two husbandmen of Grantchester, being contracted to Peter Baron of London for the delivery of 10lb of English saffron. They were paid £11 10s; the fine for failing to meet this agreement would have been £20.
The early Cambridge colleges consumed large quantities of saffron, some of which they cultivated in their own gardens , some of which they received as a tithe from their tenants, and some of which they bought from apothecaries or at markets. See the The Cambridge Colleges section for more details.
In Ickleton on his death in 1678, the parish vicar Augustus Rolph owned an acre and a half of saffron ground, valued at over £11, and 12 lbs of saffron, worth double that.
Before 1536, when it fell foul of the Reformation, the Benedictine Priory leased land for growing saffron. Later, John Catby, a Londoner, grew the crop on a plot of land leased from Valence Manor, owned by Trinity College.
In 1607, the church register recorded that after a heavy frost lasting 13 weeks all the saffron corms were rotten.
Hinxton's connection with saffron is embodied in the infamous figure of Anne Turner, who features in the Uses of Saffron section.
Around 1470, the vicar of Linton entered into a dispute with Pembroke College over saffron tithes; it took three years before they came to an agreement.
In 1727, Richard Bradley noted that the market at Linton was 'looked upon as much the best' for saffron.
George Maynard writes:
In Sawston I find as many as ten notices in as many extracts of wills. The first of them is in the will of John Brampton who leaves in 1540 to his son John a "Steache of Saffron Ground". In the will of Alyce Sheyne of Sawston, made on the 19th April 1527, occurs the following entry : "To Richard my son a rood of Saffron" and again in the will of John Peele of Sawston made 22 Jan 1530 occurs the following "to John Gory my Godson a rood of Saffron in Church field", and in the will of William Hocheton May 25 1531 "to Johan my wife amongst other things "a rood of Saffron and another to his maid Margery, and to his son John half an acre". ... John Harris of Sawston leaves by his will dated 3 Oct 1548 "To his son John a rood of Saffron & to his daughter & son William 1/2 an acre".
Abington appears in several leases and legal documents. This one from 1473 records that Elizabeth Walton, Prioress of St Radegund's priory, leased to a man named Thomas Thorgor, all the 'lands, tenements, pastures, feedings etc' from a plot in Abington. The lease had a term of 4 years and a quit rent of '8 lb of cummin'. The annual rent was '40s, 2 capons and 1 oz saffron'. Jesus College, which was founded on the site of the priory in 1496, continued to lease land in Abington.
© Jesus College, Cambridge.
© Jesus College, Cambridge.
Whittlesford was important for both saffron cultivation and trade, which centred on the White Lion Inn, where the Royston-Newmarket Road crosses the River Cam.
The White Lion Inn became the Red Lion Inn in the 18th century. This 1837 drawing is one of over 350 by the Cambridge apothecary and antiquarian Richard Relhan that can be seen on the Cambridge Digital Library. © Cambridge Antiquarian Society/Cambridge University Library.
The White Lion Inn became the Red Lion Inn in the 18th century. This 1837 drawing is one of over 350 by the Cambridge apothecary and antiquarian Richard Relhan that can be seen on the Cambridge Digital Library. © Cambridge Antiquarian Society/Cambridge University Library.
Perhaps drawing on Maynard's memories of 19th-century saffron cultivation, Enid Porter, who from 1947 to 1976 was curator of the Cambridge and County Folk Museum (now known as the Museum of Cambridge), included this line in her notebook:
'Grown and gathered in W[hittlesford]. Picking went on from dawn till 10 or 11pm. Sunday & weekdays.'
© Original notebook held by the Museum of Cambridge.
© Original notebook held by the Museum of Cambridge.
Saffron Walden was the centre of English saffron cultivation and trade for nearly 200 years. Some speculate that saffron was initially grown to supply dye for the wool industry - but much of the crop was also sent to London, Cambridge and the Low Countries.
In 1614, thieves broke into Dorothy Daye’s house in Littlebury and stole 3 ounces of saffron worth 5 shillings.
In a will of 1497, Edward Baker of Walden left his son William '3 acres of lond sette with safferon heddes lying in my safferon garden in a feeld there leeding to Sewards Ende ward'. This and other wills were recorded by George Maynard in a manuscript now found in the Cambridgeshire County Archives (Maynard MSS Vol X).
The Cambridge Colleges
The early colleges consumed copious quantities of spices, including saffron. They bought some from markets and apothecaries, received some from their tenants as tithe, and even grew small quantities in college gardens. The map below explores some of the documents that reveal these stories.
This map from 1574, made by Richard Lyne, is the earliest known complete map of Cambridge as well as the earliest depiction of a town known to have been engraved on copper by an Englishman.
The main hospital in Cambridge during medieval times was St John’s - founded c.1200. We know that in 1500 the hospital paid for a new supply of corms ('saffron heads') as well for the labour required to prepare the soil, plant the corms and harvest the flowers. The resultant saffron would have be used in medicines for many different ailments.
Along with eggs, cheese and fish, the King's College Commons Book for 1511-14 records almost weekly purchases of 'croco', usually paired with 'pyper'.
© King's College, Cambridge. Ref KCAR/4/1/6/4.
© King's College, Cambridge. Ref KCAR/4/1/6/4.
King's also grew small amounts of saffron in the college gardens and it is likely that the some was also cultivated at its short-lived (1452 -1466) manor farm in Granchester.
Peterhouse was one of the colleges which grew its own saffron. Accounts of 1374-75, for example, include payment to gardeners to prepare the soil (in the ‘grove’, a specially set-aside area west of the college), whilst those of 1520-21 mention payment for both planting and harvesting: pro collectione ac preparicione croci. For a time, this expense appears almost annually in the accounts.
© Peterhouse, Cambridge. Peterhouse Archives, Computus Roll 1374-75.
© Peterhouse, Cambridge. Peterhouse Archives, Computus Roll 1374-75.
Peterhouse accounts of 1488-89 also record that Pembroke made a one off tithe payment in saffron.
© Peterhouse, Cambridge. Peterhouse Archives, Computus Roll 1488-89.
© Peterhouse, Cambridge. Peterhouse Archives, Computus Roll 1488-89.
At least for a time, Pembroke grew saffron in its college garden. In the mid-fifteenth century, it was claimed that this was 'for the benefit of the public'. Records from 1477 also include a receipt for the purchase of saffron for which the college paid 11s 18d.
Clare records do not explicitly mention saffron, but the Cate book (a record of kitchen purchases) of 1575-83 includes a weekly 'potecarie [apothecary] bill', as well as payments to the gardener.
Trinity Cate books from 1560 to 1563 show frequent purchases of saffron along with pepper, sugar, cloves, and mace. These were luxury items, but also typical flavourings and spices of the period, things no distinguished college should do without.
The nunnery that became Jesus College received tithes in saffron, a practice that continued with the establishment of the College. In 1540, the 'Radegun tythe' consisted of grain, hay and saffron growing in the fields on the castle side of the river, while in 1557, John Sherman of Lyttleton paid a tithe of a couple of capons and an ounce of saffron for the use of a smallholding with a stable.
© Jesus College, Cambridge.
© Jesus College, Cambridge.
Some Uses Of Saffron
Like all luxury goods, saffron was coveted partly because it was so expensive. Many cultures have prized it as a culinary and medicinal ingredient, and as a pigment and dye - largely because it resembles an even more expensive substance, gold.
In this section, we will explore various uses of saffron over time: in cooking, as medicine, for dyeing, and as a metaphor in literature. There are also some recipes!
'Norfolk Saffron' is consistently ISO 3632 category I, the top international grade for saffron quality. © Sally Francis.
'Norfolk Saffron' is consistently ISO 3632 category I, the top international grade for saffron quality. © Sally Francis.
Cooking
We might recognise saffron as an ingredient of paella Valenciana, bouillabaisse Marseillaise, risotto Milanese, Jodhpuri lassi, Swedish buns, Iranian rice pudding, and Pennsylvania Dutch pot pie - but that’s just the tip of the culinary iceberg. Saffron was used extensively in Greek, Roman and Arab cooking, and eventually spread to Europe as medieval cooks sought to make their dishes attractive and to display their employers' wealth. Even when cultivated locally, saffron was much more expensive than imported spices such as mace or cinnamon; 500g cost the same as a horse.
Alls well, alls well, but there wants some saffron,
To colour the custards withall.
complains Fiddle in The Fair Maid of the Exchange (attributed to Thomas Heywood and printed in 1607), while another clown, this time in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1623), wonders:
What I am to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? […] I must have saffron to colour the warden (pear) pies….
And they were not alone. For nearly 300 years, books from the all over Europe talk about 'colouring', 'yellowing”, or 'endorring' (that is, gilding) dishes with saffron or saffron-flavoured egg washes.
It is a key ingredient in the first British cookbook, The Forme of Curye (1390) - 'the proper method of cookery' - which compiled 196 of the best recipes from Richard II’s 'master-cooks'. The grander the occasion, the greater amount of spice used, but even the simplest dishes were often 'coloured'. For example, this is how to make 'Ryse of flesh': Take rice and wash it clean. And place in an earthen pot with good broth and let it cook well. Afterward, take almond milk and add colour it with saffron and salt it. And serve forth.
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century recipe books show saffron being used to colour meat and grain dishes and even to enhance the yellow of cheese or custard. Its most surprising appearance, perhaps, is in Wyl bucke his testament, first published in 1560. The book begins with a short poem which presents itself as the last will and testament of the dying buck, thoughtfully bequeathing each part of his body to a different person. A series of recipes (for venison tripe, trotters, liver, etc) then follow, many of which rely on a good dele of Saffron.
Many of these were celebration foods, but saffron also appears as an ingredient in Lenten dishes like peascods (pea-shaped balls of spiced fruit paste, dipped in saffron batter and fried) and even mock eggs (almond paste shaped like an egg, with saffron used to colour the 'yolk'). There was no restriction on eating spices and these precursors to contemporary energy bars helped people get through the fasting period.
Ryse of fleysche, Forme of Curye (1390). © Rylands Medieval Collection, John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester. Rylands MS 7, f.14v and f.15r.
Ryse of fleysche, Forme of Curye (1390). © Rylands Medieval Collection, John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester. Rylands MS 7, f.14v and f.15r.
There are also several accounts of nuns scenting their veils with saffron as a physical and psychological pick-me-up. Katerina Lemmel (1466-1533), a Nuremberg businesswoman who became a Birgittine nun, ordered particularly large amounts from her cousin's trading firm during Lent and Advent. After all, she told him, One does need to spice things up a bit especially when the men and the sisters have to sing and pray so much.
Katerina Lemmel in the Imhoff-Tetzel-Holzschuher Epitaph, Church of St Sebald, Nuremberg. © Volker Schier, CC By-SA 3.0.
Katerina Lemmel in the Imhoff-Tetzel-Holzschuher Epitaph, Church of St Sebald, Nuremberg. © Volker Schier, CC By-SA 3.0.
Cakes and Buns
While the British taste for saffron in savoury dishes had waned by the eighteenth century, the spice continued to be used to flavour cakes and buns. Sam Bilton includes the best of these in her recent history of British saffron and its recipes, Fool's Gold (2022). Here are two more.
The first is found in The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digby Opened (1669), a collection of recipes by a man who has been described as pirate and poet, courtier and cook, King's servant and traitor's son. Digby includes saffron in a recipe for Portugal Broth, as it was made for the Queen, and in this one, for a less exotic but excellent cake:
To a Peck of fine flower, take six pounds of fresh butter, which must be tenderly melted, ten pounds of Currants, of Cloves and Mace, half an ounce of each, an ounce of Cinnamon, half an ounce of Nutmegs, four ounces of Sugar, one pint of Sack mixed with a quart at least of thick barm of Ale (as soon as it is settled, to have the thick fall to the bottom, which will be, when it is about two days old) half a pint of Rose-water; half a quarter of an ounce of Saffron. Then make your paste, strewing the spices, finely beaten, upon the flower: Then put the melted butter (but even just melted) to it; then the barm, and other liquors: and put it into the oven well heated presently. For the better baking of it, put it in a hoop, and let it stand in the oven one hour and half. You Ice the Cake with the whites of two Eggs, a small quantity of Rose-water, and some Sugar.
A little simpler than Digby's is the recipe that appears in The Queene-Like Closet, originally published in 1670. Hannah Woolley, one of the first writers to make a living writing books on household management, addressed ingenious persons of the female sex on how to ensure their servants were able to satisfy their desire for delicacies, like these very pretty Cakes that will keep a good while:
Take a Quart of fine Flower and the yolks of 4 Eggs, a quarter of a pound of Sugar, and a little Rosewater, with some beaten Spice, and as much Cream as will work it into a Paste, work it very well and beat it, then rowl it as thin as possible, and cut them round with a Spur, such as the Pastry Cooks do use; then fill them with Currans first plumped a little in Rosewater and Sugar, so put another sheet of Paste over them and close them, prick them, and bake them but let not your Oven be too hot; you may colour some of them with Saffron if you please, and some of them you may ice over with Rosewater and Sugar, and the White of an Egg beaten together.
A recipe for these saffron buns, adapted from Sarah Harrison's The House-Keep's Pocket Book; and Compleat Family Cook (1738), is included in Sam Bilton's Fool's Gold. © Sam Bilton.
A recipe for these saffron buns, adapted from Sarah Harrison's The House-Keep's Pocket Book; and Compleat Family Cook (1738), is included in Sam Bilton's Fool's Gold. © Sam Bilton.
Stanhope Alexander Forbes, The Saffron Cake (1920). Forbes was a founding member of the Newlyn school of artists; the scene here is a Cornish fisherman's cottage. © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images.
Stanhope Alexander Forbes, The Saffron Cake (1920). Forbes was a founding member of the Newlyn school of artists; the scene here is a Cornish fisherman's cottage. © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images.
Frontispiece of the 1674 edition of The queene-like closet, or Rich cabinet © Folger Library Digital Image Collection. CC BY-SA.
Frontispiece of the 1674 edition of The queene-like closet, or Rich cabinet © Folger Library Digital Image Collection. CC BY-SA.
Herbals and other medical guides
The line between food and medicine is hard to draw, especially when it comes to saffron. It was recognised as a powerful ingredient from classical times and featured in herbals as late as the nineteenth century. Only in recent years has saffron's possible efficacy in different contexts been subject to evidence-based clinical trials.
It was significant that saffron appeared in De Materia Medica (50-70 C.E.), by the Greek physician Dioscorides, one of the most important pharmacopeiae of medicinal plants and their uses, which circulated for more than a thousand years, in Latin, Hebrew and Arabic translations and adaptations.
Saffron is one a large number of simples (single-ingredient recipes) included in this manuscript fragment of medicinal recipes owned by a druggist, who is referred to as ‘the Damascene’ (Al-Dimašqī). The book is part of the Cairo Genizah, a collection of 400,000 Jewish ms. fragments and Fatimid administrative documents from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. © Cambridge University Library, T-S Ar. 39.65.
Saffron is one a large number of simples (single-ingredient recipes) included in this manuscript fragment of medicinal recipes owned by a druggist, who is referred to as ‘the Damascene’ (Al-Dimašqī). The book is part of the Cairo Genizah, a collection of 400,000 Jewish ms. fragments and Fatimid administrative documents from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. © Cambridge University Library, T-S Ar. 39.65.
Folio 9r. of the Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary, c. 1500, featuring Rew (rue), Saffrun (saffron), Sperage (asparagus), and Suage (sage). It was acquired from the library of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
Folio 9r. of the Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary, c. 1500, featuring Rew (rue), Saffrun (saffron), Sperage (asparagus), and Suage (sage). It was acquired from the library of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
Many of the woodcuts included in Leonhart Fuchs's De Historia Stirpium (1542) represent specimens from his own garden. As well as emphasising the long stigma that distinctively fall outside the flower, Fuchs has the artist draw attention to the long leaves that develop after flowering. Only 54 hand-coloured copies of the first edition survive, including this one which also includes annotations by an early English owner. Here the Linnean name C. sativus has been pencilled in. © Cambridge University Library. CC-BY-NC 3.0
Many of the woodcuts included in Leonhart Fuchs's De Historia Stirpium (1542) represent specimens from his own garden. As well as emphasising the long stigma that distinctively fall outside the flower, Fuchs has the artist draw attention to the long leaves that develop after flowering. Only 54 hand-coloured copies of the first edition survive, including this one which also includes annotations by an early English owner. Here the Linnean name C. sativus has been pencilled in. © Cambridge University Library. CC-BY-NC 3.0
In Britain, although saffron featured in medieval herbals and household manuals, it became ubiquitous in the printed herbals which began to circulate widely from the mid sixteenth century, coinciding with the spice's larger-scale cultivation. The first scientific herbal written by an Englishman was by William Turner, a Fellow of Pembroke College: it was published in three parts, in 1551, 1562, and 1568. While not forgetting to display his own knowledge of Latin, Turner made a deliberate decision to write in English, since, he asked, How many surgianes and apothecaries are there in England which can understande Plini in Latin or Galene and Dioscorides, where as they wryte ether in Greke or translated into Latin? Turner included a copy of Fuchs's woodcut, labelling the plant 'Medicinal Crocus', and alerted readers to the difference between this and 'false saffron', that is saffflower (Carthamus tinctorius). He also warned of the dangers of 'wild' or 'meadow saffron', the poisonous Colchicum autumnale.
Under the heading 'The Nature of wilde Saffrone' Turner warns that It is good to knowe this herbe that a man maye isschewe it / it will strangell a man and kyll him in the space of one daye / even as some kinde of Todestolles do. © Cambridge University Library. Photograph by Emily Dourish.
Under the heading 'The Nature of wilde Saffrone' Turner warns that It is good to knowe this herbe that a man maye isschewe it / it will strangell a man and kyll him in the space of one daye / even as some kinde of Todestolles do. © Cambridge University Library. Photograph by Emily Dourish.
Recipes involving saffron often appeared when smallpox was circulating, but the spice also features in cures for depression, indigestion, deafness, boils, and moth infestations. Many herbals suggested infusing saffron in chicken stock or cow's milk, but the most effective medium was said to be women's breast milk , especially in treating eye complaints. A number of herbals also suggested that, taken in wine, saffron would prevent drunkeness and provoketh bodily lust.
Gherardo Cibo, illustration in Pietro Andrea Mattioli's 1554 edition of Dioscorides. © British Library Add. 22332 f.160.
Gherardo Cibo, illustration in Pietro Andrea Mattioli's 1554 edition of Dioscorides. © British Library Add. 22332 f.160.
Seventeenth-century books on women’s medicine include saffron in remedies for difficult menstruation, infertility, difficult pregnancy, difficult birth and to strengthen the production of breast milk. In Abraham Cowley's poem 'Saffron', included in Plantarum Libri Sex (1662), the spice itself even boasts of its gynaecological benefits:
But having been an Instance of Love's pow'r
To Females still a sacred flow'r,
Tis just that I shou'd now the Womb defend,
And be to Venus Seat a friend.
Gainst all that wou'd the teeming part annoy
My ready Succour I emply,
I ease the lab'ring Pangs, and bring away
The Birth that past its time wou'd stay.
But it was the spice's astringent and comforting qualities, even if not actually ingested, which interested Francis Bacon. In The Historie of Life and Death (1638), he recalls an Englishman who, on crossing the Channel with a bag of saffron, to avoid paying duty, carried it for concealment around his stomach, and although before he had always been very sea-sick, he was this time quite well and felt no nausea. Bacon also believed that regular consumption could lengthen one's life; presumably in moderate amounts, for the German physician Hertodt warned that excessive consumption led to death by immoderate laughing.
Saffron also appears in various 'cure-alls' involving multiple rare and exotic ingredients. The Countess of Kent’s Powder: good against all malignant and Pestilent diseases, French pox, Small Pox, Measles, Plague, Pestilence, malignant or Scarlet Fevers, (and) good against Melancholy included powdered pearls, ambergris from sperm whales, imported Peruvian roots and the contents of a goat's intestines. Saffron was the least of it. Not quite as complicated is the concoction proffered to the eponymous Volpone in Ben Jonson's 1606 comedy. Lady Politic Would-Be offers to cure him with a concoction made by adding the following ingredients to muscadel wine: Some English saffron, half a dram would serve; Your sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints, Bugloss, and barley-meal—. But he's only pretending to be ill.
There seemed to be little that saffron didn't help. Its power was such, Harrison claimed, that some merchants would wear mufflers and goggles to avoid feeling giddy and sick. In some cases, however, plants were not enough and metallic substitutes were brought in. Iron oxide was known as Crocus Martis, Saffron of Mars, and recommended to stop bleeding (as well as to glaze pots), while Crocus Metallorum, Saffron of the Metals, that is, antimony infused in wine, was an emetic.
Glass drug jar, with parchment cover labelled "Croc. Mart. Stibiat." (Saffron of Mars Antimony), probably Spanish, 17th or 18th century. © Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum Collection, Science Museum Group.
Glass drug jar, with parchment cover labelled "Croc. Mart. Stibiat." (Saffron of Mars Antimony), probably Spanish, 17th or 18th century. © Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum Collection, Science Museum Group.
It is sometimes thought that the 19th-century slang 'crocus' to mean a sham or quack doctor comes from these substances, a play on 'hocus pocus' perhaps. But the OED suggests that the term derives from the verb 'to croack' and the Latinised surname of the 17th-century surgeon Helkiah Crooke.
Plague! Pestilence! Saffron!
Given its reputation, it is not surprising that saffron was often mentioned as an ingredient in the prevention and treatment of the plague. Indeed waves of plague in Britain in the late fifteen century probably explain why saffron - which had previously only been imported in small amounts - began to be cultivated in earnest in the gardens of monasteries and the early Cambridge colleges.
© King's College, Cambridge. KC Ledger Book, 1, f.41v.
© King's College, Cambridge. KC Ledger Book, 1, f.41v.
But the quanties required usually required a trip to the apothecary. The page above records a payment to 'Ric. Smyth apotecary'. It is taken from the King's College Mundum Book, a record of general accounts and payments made. This volume covers the 1460s and 1470s. Smyth, who supplied the college with ‘substantial quantities’ of spices, secured three leases from King's in Great St Mary’s parish. His name also appears in the Peterhouse accounts.
Drug Bottle, with the inscription 'Zafarano' (Saffron), Siena, 1510-1530. © Victoria and Albert Museum.
Drug Bottle, with the inscription 'Zafarano' (Saffron), Siena, 1510-1530. © Victoria and Albert Museum.
The last plague epidemic of plague to reach Britain arrived in 1665, and it’s not surprising that saffron featured in the plethora of preventive measures and cures proposed at that time. For example, Certaine necessary directions, as well for the cure of the plague, as for preventing the infection: with many easie medicines of small charge, very profitable to his Majesties subjects, published by the Royal College of Physicians in 1665, suggested how saffron could be used in ‘inward’ medicines to be drunk, as well as ‘outward’ treatments such as poultices to apply to the skin.
‘For women with child, children, and such as cannot take bitter things’, this inward conconction was recommended: Take Conserve of Red-Roses, Conserve of Wood-Sorrel, of each two ounces, Conserves of Borage, of Sage-flowers, of each six drams, Bole-Armoniack, shavings of Harts-horn, Sorrel-seeds, of each two drams, yellow or white Saunders half a dram, Saffron one scruple, Syrupe of Wood-Sorrel, enough to make it a moist Electuary; mix them well, take so much as a Chestnut at a time, once or twice a day, as you shall find cause.
Since the plague was thought to be spread by ‘miasma’ or 'corrupted' air, fumigating that air by burning or simply inhaling saffron’s powerful scent was considered a powerful protection. Amulets were another kind of ‘outward medicine’, hung about the Neck and worn upon the Breast to defend the heart from the venom of the Pestilence, as William Kemp put it in his Brief Treatise on the nature, causes, signes, preservation from, and cure of the pestilence (1665). One recipe suggests combining powdered saffron with mercury and arsenic, dissolving the mixture in rose-water and gum, and making it into little cakes. I need not tell you that you must not eat them, Kemp warns his readers, but sew them in a little silk bag, fastening it to a ribbon, and hanging it about your Neck, let it lie about the middle of your Breast. You are to avoid all violent exercise and over-heating of your self, for fear of growing fainty whilest you wear it.
© Cambridge University Library. Photograph by Emily Dourish.
© Cambridge University Library. Photograph by Emily Dourish.
Another recipe, from Present Remedies Against the Plague (1603), evoked the alchemical figure of the philosophers' stone, powerful enough to transform base metals into gold, and even to confer immortality. This is how to make the Philosopher's Egg, a Special Preservative:
© Cambridge University Library. Photograph by Emily Dourish.
© Cambridge University Library. Photograph by Emily Dourish.
Take an egg, make a hole in the top of it, take out the white and the yolk, and fill the shell only with Saffron, roast the shell and saffron together, in embers of charcoals, until the shell wax yellow: then beat shell and altogether in a mortar, with half a spoonful of mustard seed: Now so soon as any suspicion is had of infection, dissolve the weight of a French crown in ten spoonfuls of posset-Ale, drink it lukewarm, and sweat upon it in your naked bed.
Another version of this recipe - offered as a cure-all and thought to last up to 30 years - appears as number 596 in Lady Knebbit's medical miscellenary, begun in around 1630-40, and now held as MS447 by the Royal College of Physicians. To her concoction, Lady Knebbit further suggests the addition of 4 or 5 fragments of unicornes horne.
Blue glass bottle, inscribed "SYR: CROCI (saffron syrup), British, 2nd half of 19th century. © Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum, Science Museum Collections.
Blue glass bottle, inscribed "SYR: CROCI (saffron syrup), British, 2nd half of 19th century. © Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum, Science Museum Collections.
The Civil War, and After
Saffron's medical heyday coincided with the English Civl War, but the circumstances of war required new remedies. Approved Medicines of Little Cost (1651) is a small book of recipes and remedies by Richard Elkes especially designed for the souldiers knap-sack and the country mans closet knapsack. One of these is a poultice for bullet wounds that included saffron, rose water and elder. Elkes also notes that he has heard a story of some Souldiers that would boyle Saffron, Pepper, and Graines in running water, and in that liquor dip their shirts twice in the weeke, it will make the shirt yellow, but it destroyed Lice and Itch. The 'but' is significant: for Puritans, yellow clothing was associated with courtly excess and, as we'll see, the 'lousy' Irish. Parliamentarian soldiers needed assurance that they could fight in yellow shirts for hygienic reasons.
In the 1660s, after the lifting of Cromwellian restrictions, traditional uses of saffron returned. There was a renewed interest in pleasure and display. Gilded food became popular again as did books of recipes for women wanting to improve their skin, whiten their teeth, and dye their hair with saffron. And saffron was also popular as a preventive and remedy for 'the great pox', syphilis, which was considered rife in the Restoration Court.
© Sam Bilton. For a recipe drawing on several historical concoctions involving saffron and brandy, see Bilton's Fool's Gold.
© Sam Bilton. For a recipe drawing on several historical concoctions involving saffron and brandy, see Bilton's Fool's Gold.
But it wasn't all fun. In The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Richard Burton had suggested saffron wine for the kind of windy, hypochondriacal melancholy which originated in the abdomen. The saffron infusion worked both on sharp belchings, fulsome crudities, wind and rumbling in the guts and feelings of sadness, anxiety and discontent. Later writers recommended saffron concoctions for all kinds of melancholy. Saffron posset is very good medicine against heaviness of the spirit, insists Arbella in Sir Richard Howard's Restoration comedy, The Committee (1662) - and in 1670 Hannah Woolley included the spice in a recipe for 'Melancholy Water'.
©The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Ashm. 1036 (22)
©The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Ashm. 1036 (22)
Keeping cheerful was also emphasised by Georg Andreas Agricola in his 1680 broadsheet The Virtues and Uses of the Cordial Spirit of Saffron, listing all the London coffee shops - and booksellers, shoemakers, barbers and stationers - which sold saffron-infused wine, the half-Pint Bottle at the Shilling three Pence, the Pint Bottle Half a Crown, and Quart Bottle a Crown.
SAFFRON itself is of such excellent virtue and of so great use among many Nations, as Germans, Polanders, Hungarians, Bohemians, Sclavonians, Groats, Turks, and divers others, the broadsheet promised, that they commonly boil no Flesh, no Fish, no Milk, no Herb, or any thing else fit for Meals, without some Saffron, which they do, both to cause the better Concoction of the Dyet, and to make their own Spirits chearful, and to preserve themselves against the injury of corrupted Air, or against the violence of any Distemper.
Jar for 'syrupus croci', London, c. 1750. Yale Center for British Art, Gift of James N. Spencer and Kathleen Moretto Spencer.
Jar for 'syrupus croci', London, c. 1750. Yale Center for British Art, Gift of James N. Spencer and Kathleen Moretto Spencer.
A pigment and a dye
An artist mixing colours in an inhabited initial opening the entry for ‘Color’, from James le Palmer’s Omne Bonum, c. 1360–c. 1375. © British Library, Royal MS 6 E VI/2, f. 329r.
An artist mixing colours in an inhabited initial opening the entry for ‘Color’, from James le Palmer’s Omne Bonum, c. 1360–c. 1375. © British Library, Royal MS 6 E VI/2, f. 329r.
Saffron's distinctive golden colour - derived from crocin, a water-soluble carotenoid - has appealed to those wanting to colour food, drink, cloth, hair, paintings and manuscripts. Analysis reveals its presence in Indo-Persian miniatures and, where it is possible to test them, in some European illuminated manuscripts, where what Daniel Thomson calls its fugitive colour was less likely to fade. Unusually for medieval pigments, it was easy to prepare - a pinch of stigmas simply needed to be infused with water or glair (egg white) - and, unlike other gold substitutes involving mercury and arsenic, it was not toxic. Saffron was used on its own, or to enhance mosaic gold (tin sulfide) in the flourishes around initials. It was valued as much for its luminosity as for its hue and its presence enriched and stabilised red (when mixed with vermillion) and green (with verdigris). In Il Libro della Arte, a 'how to' book written around the turn of the fifteenth century, the Italian painter Cennino d'Andrea Cennini recommended it for the most perfect grass-green imaginable.
Saffron was also sometimes used as a glaze on cheap metals, like burnished tinfoil, to make it look like gold. In Eastward Ho, a 1605 comedy by George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston, Captain Seagull sits in a London tavern fantasising about Virginia as a treasure trove where gold is abundant and children wear rubies and diamonds on their coats, as commonly as our children wear saffon gilto brooches, and groats with holes in 'em. In Jonson's Volpone, or the Fox performed the following year, Corvino points out that the titular character wears a saffron jewel. Margaret Cavendish, meanwhile, tended to be scathing of the chemists' Gold Making Stone with Saffron in its powder. But sometimes it was nice to imagine it might work. Her husband's estates had been sequestered during the Civil War and she wrote in Philosophical Letters (1664) of wishing with all my heart, the poor Royalists had had some quantity of that powder ... if it were so, I my self would turn a Chymist to gain so much as to repair my Noble Husbands losses. But she knew it was a vain wish.
Most importantly, saffron was used as a dye for linen and wool. Medieval Walden was an important wool centre and Dorothy Cromarty speculates that it was development of dyeworks in the town that initially led to the crocus's cultivation. But even then saffron was a controversial colour.
As soon as the English invaded Ireland in the twelfth century, they saw styles of dress after the Irishe fashion as a sign of resistance to be suppresssed. In particular, safyrred clothes became a focal point for sumptuary legislation. The Protestant colonists associated the colour with both outrageous extravagance and poor hygiene. For saffron did not only brighten clothes, it deodorised, disinfected and (especially if urine was added to the dye) de-loused them. It was widely repeated that, due to the beastliness of the people, and the want of cleanly women to wash them, Ireland swarmed with lice. Edmund Spenser argued that it was the Irish habit of much sweating and long wearing of linen that led them to emulate the saffron-dying practice of (Catholic) old Spaniards. But there is no evidence that that the so-called wild Irish were particularly lousy, nor indeed that saffron works as an insecticide.
By the late 19th century, Celtic Revivalists started to suggest that the dye was the product not of early modern trade but ancient Irish tradition. W.B. Yeats imagined Cleona, Queen of the Munster Sheogues, in saffron robes, while his friend Lady Gregory described meeting a Gaelic enthusiast with long hair, a cloak, a green tie, a saffron kilt, and saffron stockings (with a hole in them).
Albrecht Dürer, ‘Thus go the soldiers in Ireland, beyond England / Thus go peasants in Ireland’, 1521. © Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. The figure on the far right is wearing the often-banned saffroned tunic or léine croich.
Albrecht Dürer, ‘Thus go the soldiers in Ireland, beyond England / Thus go peasants in Ireland’, 1521. © Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. The figure on the far right is wearing the often-banned saffroned tunic or léine croich.
Anne Turner's Saffron Ruffs
Saffron's use in cosmetics and as a dye became increasingly contentious in the 17th century. One of the most lively public debates concerned the difference between face-painting (an improper practice since women distorted their natural appearance) and properly beautifying physic (saffron featured as a face wash for the pox and a hair-dye). Giovanni Battista della Porta, for example, includes several recipes for yellow hair in Della magia naturale (1589), translated as Natural Magick. After offering a great deal of advice on beautifying, Porta ends with some sports against women, a little merriment against their decking of themselves. How, for example, might one tell if a woman is wearing make up? Porta suggests chewing saffron and then breathing on her: if she's wearing make-up, he insists, her face will immediately turn yellow.
Frances, Countess of Somerset, studio of William Larkin, c. 1615 © National Portrait Gallery, NPG 1955
Frances, Countess of Somerset, studio of William Larkin, c. 1615 © National Portrait Gallery, NPG 1955
In Protestant Britain as well as Ireland, saffron dye came to be seen as morally suspect, and no story epitomises its reputation more than that of Anne Turner. Turner grew up in saffron country, in the South Cambridgeshire village of Hinxton and later made a business with a patented saffron dye, used to create lacey gold-like ruffs which set off very low neck lines. Her friend Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, is wearing one in the painting above. Turner became notorious after she was arrested for the murder of the countess's enemy Sir Thomas Overbury. Painted a bawd, a witch and a Catholic, Turner was convicted on scanty evidence and executed in 1615.
An early 19th-century line engraving of Anne Turner, possibly by Ralph Smith Kirby. © National Portrait Gallery.
An early 19th-century line engraving of Anne Turner, possibly by Ralph Smith Kirby. © National Portrait Gallery.
In his autobiography, Sir Simonds D'Ewes recorded that Turner wore a yellow band and cuffs to court every day, and that at her execution, the hangman had his band and his cuffs of the same colour - in his case as a deterrent. But the trend lingered on. In Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass (1616), Satan notes that even car-men/ are got into the yellow starch, while in 1620 the Dean of Westminster felt it necessary to ban woman wearing it from attending services.
The Turner trial epitomised puritan anxiety about excess and effeminacy. In his 1618 play The Irish Hubbub, Barnaby Rich laments the downfall of martial England: We have converted the collar of steel to a yellow-starched band, the lance to a tobacco-pipe, the arming-sword and gantlet to a pair of perfumed gloves; we are fitter for a Coach then for a camp. A few years later, in his hit masque The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621), Ben Jonson has his gypsies talk about being descendants of Ptolemy and sing of their costume of ribands, bells, and saffron'd linen. But then their metamorphosis into new men, true Englishmen, begins.
Hana Mallett of Found Botanical Dyes, demonstrating how to dye with saffron. 'Saffron Day' in Saffron Walden, 16 October 2022. © Saffron Walden Camera Club.
Hana Mallett of Found Botanical Dyes, demonstrating how to dye with saffron. 'Saffron Day' in Saffron Walden, 16 October 2022. © Saffron Walden Camera Club.
Metaphorical Saffron
When saffron appears in poems, plays and sermons it is often in the context of a classical translation or allusion, and the emphasis is usually on the colour. Homer's image of the dawn as saffron-robed and saffron-haired was picked up by many, as were saffron's associations with the god of weddings, Hymen, found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. For example, John Milton's 'L'Allegro' (1645) has Hymen appear in saffron robe with taper clear,/And pomp, and feast, and revelry, while in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (1587), Revenge describes a inversion of the marriage ceremony in which Hymen, clothed in sable and saffron robe puts out the nuptial torches with blood.
Sometimes, however, a writer will find a metaphorical use that draws on the experience of early modern saffron consumption. Chaucer’s Pardoner, for example, in The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), describes dropping a few words of Latin into a sermon as the equivalent of adding saffron to a dish of gruel:
And in Latyn I speke a words fewe
To saffron with my predicacioun
And for to stire hem to devocioun.
Saffron also played a part in the theological debates of the Reformation. In 1540, Robert Barnes was accused of likening the Virgin Mary to a saffron-bag, while Hugh Latimer, in the 1548 sermon in which he famously compared preaching to the labour and work of ploughing, responded to the charge first with a denial, but then with a defence of that similitude:
I might have said thus: as the saffron-bag that hath been full of saffron, or hath had saffron in it, doth ever after savour and smell of the sweet saffron that it contained; so our blessed lady, which conceived and bare Christ in her womb, did ever after resemble the manners and virtues of that precious babe that she bare. And what had our blessed lady been the worse for this? or what dishonour was this to our blessed lady?
A less positive connotation is at play in Shakespeare's Alls Well that Ends Well (1623). For Lafeu, Parolles is a snipt-taffeta fellow there, whose villanous saffron would have made all the unbaked and doughy youth of a nation in his colour. Here, saffron-dye is a sign of vanity and dissolute behaviour, while young and easily guiled Bertram resembles the cakes and pies susceptible to its influence.
To 'saffron' was not just to stain but to deceive. In 'The Comparison', one of his nastier poems from the mid 1590s, John Donne describes the 'sweat drops' of his mistresss as pearl carcanats, while those that issue from the woman who is not his mistress resemble vile lying stones in Saffrond tin.
Saffron could gild harsh realities or act as a kind of tranquilliser. A character in John Webster's The White Devil (1614) compares the effects of the spice to the rare tricks of a Machiavellian:
He doth not come, like a gross plodding slave,
And buffet you to death; no, my quaint knave,
He tickles you to death, makes you die laughing,
As if you had swallow’d down a pound of saffron.
You see the feat, ’tis practis’d in a trice;
To teach court honesty, it jumps on ice.
The Gradual Decline of the Local Crop
Saffron production on the border of Cambridgeshire and Essex continued through the 18th century, with its centre gradually moving north from Saffron Walden, where barley and brewing proved more profitable.
But efforts to encourage saffron's cultivation, and particularly to improve the drying process, continued. As we've seen, the Cambridge Professor of Botany, Richard Bradley, had a keen interest in kilns but he was also determined to increase this valuable Commodity, and to be the means of cultivating it other places than where it is now: his manuals of the 1720s provide detailed instructions. Around the same time, in 1728, James Douglas published ‘an account of saffron’ in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions, again suggesting how other parts of Britain could learn from that large Tract of ground that lies between Saffron-Walden and Cambridge, in a circle of about ten Miles Diameter. The essay was reprinted as a book and published in Dublin as well as London.
Despite all this encouragement, by the end of the eighteenth century, Thomas Martyn, the third Cambridge Professor of Botany, lamented in his Flora Rustica that saffron production was now confined to a very small district in Cambridgeshire, at the foot of the Gogmagog hills. Martyn pursued a nationalist line, arguing that if some means are not made to encourage it we shall be wholly at the mercy of foreign dealers in this commodity, who sophisticate it with Safflower, Marrygolds, &c.; whereas ours comes out of the hands of growers pure and genuine.
Demand persisted. We know that Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, grew the crocus in his London physic garden and prepared saffron cordial in his still room because his friend Alexander Pope wrote to him (in an undated letter c. 1720s) asking for some: I found my mother in want of saffron, Pope explained, and I know you would not leave us in want of anything. We assume that Harley responded promptly.
And yet, as long as saffron was consumed, it was satirised as the stuff of hypochondriacs. In A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), the Reverend William Law, one-time Fellow of Emmanuel College, offered a rather Popean character sketch of a woman called Flavia who would be a miracle of piety if she was but half so careful of her soul as she is of her body. Since she never thinks she is well enough, Flavia spends all her money on sleeping draughts and waking draughts, spirits for the head, drops for the nerves, cordials for the stomach, and saffron for her tea.
By the mid nineteenth century, Mary Callcott notes, stronger drugs largely replaced saffron. Callcott sees saffron as an exotic relic, important mainly as a biblical plant (from the Song of Solomon) to include in A Spiritual Herbal (1842).
Card featuring flowers and fruit from Bible Lands. Coloured lithograph, 1863. The crocus has star billing, and towers above myrtle, sweet calamus, lentils and flax. © Victoria and Albert Museum.
Card featuring flowers and fruit from Bible Lands. Coloured lithograph, 1863. The crocus has star billing, and towers above myrtle, sweet calamus, lentils and flax. © Victoria and Albert Museum.
William Goodall, copy after James Sowerby's illustration for William Woodville's Medical Botany, plate 259, Apr 1, 1810. © Fitzwilliam Museum, BY-NC-ND.
William Goodall, copy after James Sowerby's illustration for William Woodville's Medical Botany, plate 259, Apr 1, 1810. © Fitzwilliam Museum, BY-NC-ND.
And yet saffron continued to feature in standard reference works such as William Woodville's 4-volume Medical Botany (1790-94; 2nd ed. 1810), and in popular remedies, like the coltsfoot cough drops described by Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor (1851)). As late as 1871, the Proceedings of the Old Bailey record thefts of saffron from warehouses and druggists. But surely the most remarkable vestige of earlier ways is this cardboard box containing pieces of saffron that was used as a charm to prevent conception. It was collected from Oxfordshire sometime between 1890 and 1910.
© Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum Collection, Science Museum Group.
© Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum Collection, Science Museum Group.
But while a few individuals continued to grow saffron for their own use, commercial cultivation in Britain had ceased. There was nothing left but memories. Our story has relied in several places on the records of George Nathan Maynard, who eventually became the first paid curator of Saffron Walden Museum. In 1845, then a young man, he spoke to elderly inhabitants of his own village, Whittlesford, in order to create a verbal and visual record of ‘Gathering saffron’. Those he spoke to remembered the harvests as a time of great hilarity, helped along by some very strong beer specially brewed for the occasion.
A page from George Maynard's notebook, showing the gathering of saffron. © Cambridgeshire Archives, ref. R58/5/11.
A page from George Maynard's notebook, showing the gathering of saffron. © Cambridgeshire Archives, ref. R58/5/11.
The most recent first-hand account of saffron in these parts is from 1887. Joseph Clarke, a keen archaeologist, naturalist and antiquarian, wrote a paper to be delivered at the Essex Naturalists' Club on 'the saffron plant' and its 'connection with the name of the town of Saffron Walden'. He was 85 at the time and reflected that he was probably ... almost the only man who has ever seen a field of saffron in bloom - that is in this vicinity. The last of the saffron growers, with whom I was well acquinted when a child, was named Knot. He lived at Duxford ....He grew about half an acre, and made a journey once a year to dispose of his produce. ....Up until 1816 he continued to grow saffron, and in 1818 the only remains of the crocus were to be found in his garden.
Saffron Today
Remembering the region's history in Saffron Walden
Unsurprisingly it is in Saffron Walden that the region's history is best remembered - in the pargetting motifs of seventeenth-century houses and pubs, in displays at the town museum, and in the crocus motifs that are still the town's contemporary signage. On 16th October 2022, the Saffron Walden Heritage Development Group organised an all-cooking, all-dyeing Saffron Day.
Margaret Fairhurst, of House of Saffron, shows her recipe book A Taste of Saffron and other products to Queen Elizabeth I (played by Bess Chilver) at Saffron Day, 16 October 2022. © Saffron Walden Camera Club.
Margaret Fairhurst, of House of Saffron, shows her recipe book A Taste of Saffron and other products to Queen Elizabeth I (played by Bess Chilver) at Saffron Day, 16 October 2022. © Saffron Walden Camera Club.
Shopping & eating in Cambridge
Cambridge is now a much more multicultural place than it was in the sixteenth century and, in Mill Road alone, one can buy saffron from Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan. Most shops keep the expensive spice behind the till.
Mill Road's bounty, September 2022.
Mill Road's bounty, September 2022.
Varities of saffron syrup, tea, and sugar, as well as a saffron and pepper cheese, are also on sale. Meanwhile, in the street's many restaurants, the happy marriage of saffron and rice takes many sweet and savoury forms: from Spanish paella to Italian risotto to Indian firni.
Reintroducing cultivation to Essex & Norfolk
David Smale picking flowers. © Emily Attwood Photography/English Saffron.
David Smale picking flowers. © Emily Attwood Photography/English Saffron.
Over the last few decades saffron cultivation has been revived, on a small scale, in several places in England and Wales. In 2004 David Smale began English Saffron based in Essex and Devon, while Norfolk Saffron, run by Sally Francis, is located on that county's northern coast. Francis is also a botanist and a historian of East Anglian saffron. With the translator Maria Teresa Ramandi, she recently produced a new edition of Hertodt's 1671 study of the 'regis vegetabilium', Crocologia.
The saffron field, October 18, 2022. © Sally Francis /Norfolk Saffron.
The saffron field, October 18, 2022. © Sally Francis /Norfolk Saffron.
SELECTED FURTHER READING
Sam Bilton, Fool's Gold: A History of British Saffron (London: Prospect Books, 2022)
Spike Bucklow, The Riddle of the Image: The Secret Science of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion, 2014)
Joseph Clarke, 'Notes on the Saffron Plant (Crocus sativus, L.) and in Connection with the Name of the Town of Saffron Walden', The Essex Naturalist (1887), 9-16.
Dorothy Cromarty, The Fields of Saffron Walden in 1400 (Chelmsford: Essex County Record Office Publications, 1966)
Susan Flavin, Consumption and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland: Saffron, Stockings and Silk (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014)
Sally Francis, Saffron: The Story of England's Red Gold (Burnham Norton: Norfolk Saffron, 2020)
Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press: 2008)
Ramin Ganeshram, Saffron: A Global History (London: Reaktion Books, 2020)
A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely (Victoria County History Series), multi-volume, searchable on British History Online .
Clare Patricia Holmes, Economic Activity in Saffron Walden between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries: with particular reference to the crocus industry (C.P. Holmes, 1988)
Anne Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
John S. Lee, Cambridge and Its Economic Region, 1450-1560 (Hatfield: University of Herfordshire Press, 2006)
Kenneth Neale, 'Saffron Walden: "Crocuses and Crokers"', in Essex 'Full of Profitable Things' (Oxford: Leopard's Head Press, 1996), pp. 225-44.
Rowland Parker, The Common Stream: 200 years of the English Village (1975; Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1994)
Volker Schier, 'Probing the Mystery of the Use of Saffron in Medieval Nunneries', The Senses & Society , vol. 5 (2010), pp. 57-72.
Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: A History, from the Black Death to the Present Day (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
Daniel V. Thompson, The Materials of Medieval Painting (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1936)
Robert Willis, The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge and the Colleges of Cambridge and Eton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1886), vol. 3.
Acknowledgements
This project was funded by the University's Research and Collections Programme and we are grateful for its support, especially that of director Kristi Bain. Archivists and librarians across various colleges were extremely helpful: special thanks to Lizzy Ennion-Smith (Pembroke), Adam C. Green (Trinity), Roger Lovatt and Patricia McGuire (King's), and Rob Payne (Jesus). Other collections were generously opened up to us and we are particularly grateful to Emily Dourish, Stuart Roberts and Zoe Smith at the University Library; to Lauren M. Gardiner, Curator, and Amber Horning, Digitisation and Curation Assistant, at the University Herbarium; and to Henrietta Ward, Curator of Northern European Paintings and Drawings at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Sally Francis at Norfolk Saffron and Penny Attwood at English Saffron were both very supportive of the project, not least with photographs. Nicki Davidowski and Steven Connor made our conference at CRASSH possible and we would like to thank all the speakers, and those who attended the conference and our earlier talk at the Cambridge Festival. Judith Rodden, chair of the Saffron Walden Heritage Development Group, has helped us in many ways, and would also like to thank the Saffron Walden Camera Club for sharing photographs from 'Saffron Day' 2023. Hero Chalmers, Richard Dance, Sarah Meer, Amy Morris and Justine Provino at the English Faculty provided many useful leads, and Claire Taylor kept our accounts in order. Thanks also to Alison Light and John O'Halloran for the test-drive. Unless otherwise credited, photographs of manuscripts are by Alice Wickenden, and those of present-day Cambridge and Saffron Walden are by Kasia Boddy.
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