Spirit of roses is made by distilling rose-petals with a small quantity of spirits of wine, and forms an agreeable article for external applications. The green leaves of the sweet-brier are sometimes, in France, steeped in spirits of wine to impart a fragrance; and in England they are frequently used to flavor cowslip wine.
As the petals of the rose preserve their fragrance for a long time after being dried, many are in the habit of making, annually, little bags filled with them. These, being placed in a drawer or wardrobe, impart an agreeable perfume to the linen or clothing with which they may come in contact. The petals can be obtained from almost any garden in sufficient quantity for this purpose, and can be dried by the process mentioned hereafter. The confectioners, distillers, and perfumers of France draw from the Rose a part of their perfumes, particularly from R. Damascena, and R. centifolia, in fixing their sweet odors in sugar-plums, creams, ices, oils, pomatum, essences, and fragrant powders.
The petals of the Rose, after being freshly picked and bruised in a marble mortar, until they are reduced to a sort of paste, are employed in the preparation of different kinds of confectionery. Of this paste the French also make little perfume balls of the size of a pea. They are made round in the same manner as pills, and before becoming hard, they are pierced with a needle and strung on a piece of silk. In a little while they become hard like wood, assume a brownish color, and emit a delightful perfume. This rose scent continues very long, and one writer remarks that he has known a necklace made in this style, possess, at the end of twenty-five years, as strong a perfume as when first made.
In Great Britain, in the vicinity of the large cities, and in many private gardens, the flowers are gathered for making rose-water or for drying as perfumes. In Holland, the Dutch hundred-leaved and common cabbage rose are grown extensively at Noordwich, between Leyden and Haarlem, and the dried leaves are sent to Amsterdam and Constantinople. In France, the Provence Rose is extensively cultivated near the town of Provence, about sixty miles south-east of Paris, and also at Fontenay aux Roses, near Paris, for the manufacture of rose-water, or for exportation in a dried state. The petals of the Provence Rose (Rosa Gallica) are the only ones that are said to gain additional fragrance in drying; all the other varieties losing in this process more or less of their perfume. A French writer states, that apothecaries employ both pale and red roses; the pale give more perfume, while the red keep the longer.
Loudon states that “the petals of roses ought always to be gathered as soon as the flower is fully expanded; and the gathering should never be deferred until it has begun to fade, because, in the latter case, the petals are not only discolored, but weakened in their perfume and their medical properties. They should be immediately separated from the calyx, and the claws of the petals pinched off; they are then dried in the shade, if the weather is dry and warm, or by a stove in a room, if the season is humid, care being taken, in either case, not to spread them on the ground, but on a platform raised two or three feet above it. The drying should be conducted expeditiously, because it has been found that slowly dried petals do not exhale near so much odor as those which have been dried quickly, which is also the case with hay, sweet herbs, and odoriferous vegetables generally. After the petals are dried, they are freed from any sand, dust, or eggs of insects which may adhere to them, by shaking them and rubbing them gently in a fine sieve. After this, the petals are put into close vessels, from which the air is excluded, and which are kept in a dry, airy situation.
“As it is extremely difficult to free the rose-petals entirely from the eggs of insects, they are taken out of these vessels two or three times a year, placed in sieves, rubbed, cleaned, and replaced.”
I have been careful to give the details of the above process, because it may be useful to those who embark extensively in the cultivation of roses for the exportation of petals in a dried state. We should suppose that rose-petals produced in this latitude, where the Rose has a long period of hibernation, would produce more perfume, and be more valuable in a dried state than those grown under the tropics. The Provence and Damask Rose are both known to succeed well here, and to produce abundant flowers. Their fragrance is unsurpassed, and our summer’s sun would be abundantly sufficient to dry the petals without any artificial heat. It is not too much to hope that the attention of our cultivators may yet be directed to this subject, and that the manufacture of rose-water and the preparation of dried petals may yet be an important branch of domestic industry, and form an important addition to the list of exported articles.