Rosewater

Rosewater is also the name of a suburb of Adelaide in South Australia.

Rosewater (or rose syrup) is the hydrosol portion of the distillate of rose petals. Due to the perfume industry's immense demand for rose oil, rosewater has the status of an inexpensive by-product.

Rosewater has a very distinctive flavour and is used heavily in South Asian, West Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine—especially in sweets. For example, rosewater gives loukoumia and gulab jamuns their distinctive flavour. In Iran it is also added to tea in small quantities. It is also used for religious purposes in Hinduism and Islam.

It is also a key ingredient in Sweet Lassi, a drink made from yogurt, sugar and various fruit juices.

In the Western world, rosewater is better known as an ingredient in cosmetics than as a food flavoring, though it is used in some marzipan and is sometimes used to flavor the shell-shaped French cookie called a madeleine. The official Rose Water Ointment, NF formulation was develped by Galen.

In Malaysia, rosewater is mixed with milk, sugar and pink food colouring to make a sweet drink called bandung.

Muslims were the first to distill roses and obtain the rose water. Rose perfumes are made from attar of roses or rose oil, which is a mixture of volatile essential oils obtained by steam-distilling the crushed petals of roses. The technique originated in Persia (the word rose itself is from Persian). It is also believed that Muslims introduced the rose into Spain from which they spread into Europe.

Orangewater is made from orange blossoms in a similar manner.

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