Human Flower Project

Here’s to Salep!

Before coffee overlook the land, Londoners warmed themselves with a Turkish beverage called Salep, made from orchid root. Thanks to bookseller/gardener (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), a recent visitor to Istanbul, for this healthful cup o’cheer.

If you, like me, thought of orchids as exotic flowers, you may be surprised to learn they’re also the main ingredient in a centuries-old health-grog—Asia Minor’s version of Ovaltine.

Salep is made from the tuberous roots of several wild orchids. The concoction originated in Turkey, where such plants are plentiful, but its strange sweet taste and its benefits to the intestines and other oozy membranes made it popular elsewhere, in Germany, India, and England.

“Charles Lamb refers to a ‘Salopian shop’ in Fleet Street, and says that to many tastes it has ‘a delicacy beyond the China luxury,’ and adds that a basin of it at three-halfpence, accompanied by a slice of bread-and-butter at a halfpenny, is an ideal breakfast for a chimney-sweep. Though Salep is no longer a popular London beverage, before the war it was regularly sold by street merchants in Constantinople as a hot drink during the winter.”

Still is. While Constantinople was renamed awhile back, salep remains, according to Cyndy.  “It was a creamy vanilla flavored hot drink with cinnamon sprinkled all over the top…. All I know is that it was absolutely delicious!”

Orchis mascula
Cych Valley, West Wales
Photo: http://www.first-nature.com

Wild orchid plants have two eggshaped roots: one sends the stalk and flower out, then shrivels; the other, starchy salep-producing one, sustains the plant. Witches used both, “the fresh tuber being given to promote true love, and the withered one to check wrong passions.”

Since the powdered orchid root could be stored for long periods, seafarers could make up salep and stave off illness on long ocean voyages. Today, hot salep usually replaces ice cream as a wintertime sweet, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s salep ice cream now too.

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