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

Pat Willard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2001

There are few words as evocative as saffron. Over thousands of years it has perfumed the halls of Crete's palaces, made Cleopatra more alluring, and driven crusaders and German peasants to their deaths. While spices that drove adventurers to the ends of the earth, such as cinnamon, mace, and ginger, have become commonplace, saffron remains tantalizingly exotic. Nothing more than the dried stamens of the autumn-flowering purple crocus, it might as well be fairy dust. Resistant to modern horticultural technology, the fragile blossoms must still be gathered by hand from the ancient fields of Iran, Greece, Italy, southern France, and Spain.

Secrets of Saffron is the story of this extravagant rover. Guided with wit and assurance by acclaimed food writer Pat Willard, we roam the rich landscapes of history and personal memory. We dine in the heavenly gardens of Persia; bathe with Alexander the Great; are served golden swans at the medieval court of France. With Willard's help, we also discover the quiet comforts of saffron, from soups that have eased illness to pies that defy death, until we arrive at last in the present day at a small garden in Brooklyn.

Told in sumptuous prose, complete with fabulous ancient and modern recipes—including a Moorish wedding feast, a luscious creme brulee, and a balm for an aching heart—Secrets of Saffron will awaken in you a voracious desire for the private pleasures of this most precious spice.

"I am impressed by Pat Willard's singleminded devotion to one of my favorite subjects. I have been under saffron's spell for some time and it is an integral ingredient in my cooking. I love the romance of its noble and complicated history, as well as the painstaking process of cultivation." —Todd English, author of The Olives Dessert Table

"Saffron, the haughtiest, most expensive, and most mysterious of spices, has found its rightful biographer in Pat Willard, who plumbs its historical, mythological, and psychological depths with illuminating insight and a richly evocative (and surprisingly personal) prose. For saffron lovers, this book is a necessary read; for those like myself who have previously equated that spice with such culinary esoterica as gold leaf flakes or wild fennel pollen, Secrets of Saffron is a revelation—and a highly enjoyable page-turner, as well." —John Thorne, author of Outlaw Cook and Pot on the Fire

"An admiring account of an exotic spice with a long and varied history, by a food writer whose imagination keeps the story light and lively... a charming little gift for an inquisitive cook."—Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

From Publishers Weekly

In Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice, Pat Willard (Pie Every Day; A Soothing Broth) weaves an exotic, mysterious narrative about the 2,000-year history of saffron based on fact, legend and the devices of her own imagination. Whether used by Cleopatra to make herself more desirable or by the Amish in Pennsylvania Dutch country to add zest to their everyday dishes, saffron's medicinal and flavorful charms have been found irresistible by people the world over, especially in Spain and India, where its use is best known. With an unerring ear for satisfying storytelling, Willard delivers another inventive, almost magical read. Agent, Anne Depue.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (May 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807050083
• ISBN-13: 978-0807050088
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,848,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Spicy Book Indeed, July 15, 2001

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice (Hardcover)

Pat Willard has described a passion, in _Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice_ (Beacon Press). It is a three-fold work: the history of the spice; Willard's personal history with it (a foundation for pleasing essays from a sensuous woman); and assorted recipes. I have not had enough saffron to consider myself a fan, and I have not tried the given recipes for saffron-soaked custard, pork, lobster, or paella, but I can tell you they sound good, and that Willard has written two previous well-regarded story-and-recipe books on pie and on broths. Cooks are probably in good hands.

It is enormous fun, with Willard as a laughing guide, to see world history as saffron history. She speculates that the makers of Persian carpets found saffron a useful yellow dye and its smell from the vats turned it into a perfume, and then the cooks tried it. The Egyptians used it as perfume, but especially liked the bright yellow for the clot in which to wind their dead. Alexander the Great had plenty of chances to soak up the cultures of his conquests, and liked saffron baths and tea and rice, and before dinner he had wine with saffron mixed into it. Saffron, unlike other spices, could be grown in England, and it still was costly, so it made the fortunes of such towns as Walden, which became Saffron Walden. It was only when new discoveries like capers, sugar cane, and vanilla came from the new world, and banquets were pared from forty dishes to a puritanical ten or so, that saffron began to wane. The ounces of saffron that could be harvested from acres of crocuses eventually became tons of potatoes and corn, crops that were dependable and less fussy.

Willard's history is good, but her personal stories are the best writing in the book. Her bittersweet recounting of going to the Saffron Festival in Spain, where Saffron isn't grown in any quantity anymore, is fine travel writing, and her introduction to the spice by a mysterious stranger who came to call on her has the bittersweet extended into eroticism. She has a rich memory of what happened after her mother's death: "Of all the things that go through your mind when you watch death approach, thinking of food may seem the most absurd, maybe even a little obscene. And yet it is what the living almost always turn to... the living's way of breaking away, the body understanding before the mind fully does what is the necessary and correct order demanded in the wider world." The way Willard writes about the subsequent effect of the saffron crème brûlée pie (recipe, of course, included here) would have made her mother proud. Willard can tell us also of her own successful growing and harvesting of saffron, in Brooklyn. This is a book of many delights, a gathering of all sorts of saffron stories and histories, tasty, pungent, and wonderfully personal.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Crocus lite......, February 2, 2002

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice (Hardcover)

I read SAFFRON during my lunch break and as it is a small light-weight book I was able to complete it in 2 weeks or 10 lunch breaks. SAFFRON is exactly the kind of book I like to take to work for lunch-time reading: small enough to carry in my backpack; interesting enough to induce me to put my work aside and take a much needed noon-time break; compartmentalized enough that I can read it in installments without losing track; and about food which generally increases my enjoyment of my midday meal which consists of raw carrots, boiled eggs, yogurt and an orange.

SAFFRON is not as well researched or comprehensive as TULIP by Anna Pavord nor is it as informative or well written as the "cooking" books of Elizabeth David whom Willard clearly admires. (In fact, Willard suggests the reader use David's books for recipes.) Willard explains in the opening section that she has not written an historical book documented with citations, nor has she provided recipes that work in all cases. (She says she has not tried many of them--in some cases the ingredients are no longer available or unknown, or the weights and measurements are unknown.)

Willard has gathered together interesting tidbits from a variety of sources -- autobiographical events which are probably the most entertaining part of the book as she is very forthcoming; tales, stories, quotes from literature and history, some sources mentioned in passing, other not, some researched others not. Willard's take on history is flawed but amusing. My sense is that that she selected material based on it's entertainment value not it's verismilitude. Willard's book provides the reader with a bit of diversion, and I for one need frivolity sometimes.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the saffron?, October 9, 2005

By 

Andrew Fairley - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice (Paperback)

The author writes about saffron the way I cook with saffron - sparingly. The book was probably 70% autobiography and 30% saffron. There were times where I would finish a chapter thinking, "Where was the saffron in that?"

I'll probably only ever read one book about saffron, and it was a mistake to have it be this one.