Subtleties&Stuffe Hannah Wolley The Queen-like Closet

A Recipe from Hannah Wolley's

The Queen-like Closet, 

or Rich cabinet stored with all manner of rare receipts for preserving, candying and cookery.

Here is a rather delightful recipe suitable especially for spring….from Wolley's The Queen-like Closet from the 1670 edition

XL. To Candy Flowers the best way.

Take Roses, Violets, Cowslips, or Gillyflowers, and pick them from the white bottoms, then have boiled to a Candy height, Sugar, and put in so many Flowers as the Sugar will receive, and continually stir them with the back of a Spoon, and when you see the Sugar harden on the sides of the Skillet, and on the Spoon. Take them off the fire, and keep them with stirring in the warm Skillet, till you see them part, and the Sugar as it were sifted upon them, then put them upon a Paper while they are warm and rub them gently with your hands, till all the Lumps be broken, then put them into a Cullender, and sift them as clean as may be, then poure them upon a clean Cloth, and shake them up and down till there be hardly any Sugar hanging about them; then if you would have them look as though they were new gathered, have some help, and open them with your fingers before they be quite cold, and if any Sugar hang about them, you may wipe it off with a fine Cloth; to candy Rosemary Flowers or Archangel, you must pull out the string that stands up in the middle of the Blossom, and take them which are not at all faded, and they will look as though they were new gathered, without opening. [pp 32-33]

A simpler version was also provided in the same volume:

CCXXX. To Candy Flowers.

Boil some Rosewater and Sugar together, then put in your Flowers being very dry, and boil them a little, then strew in some fine Sugar over them, and turn them, and boil them a little more, then take them from the fire, and strew some more sugar over them, then take them out and lay them to dry, and open them, and strew sugar over them, they will dry in a few hours in a hot day. [p 143]