Blossoms & Flavors: What Does Chrysanthemum Taste Like?

While these beautiful flowers, with their numerous petals and aesthetically pleasing colors and shape, exist throughout different cultures, they have been used to represent life and death.

Interestingly, France and other European countries still use these flowers to represent death, and in Asian countries like Japan, the white-colored chrysanthemums have the same meaning.

But they aren’t just here to represent the different parts of life; Chrysanthemums are highly nutritious and have many health benefits, including being the best hangover medicine.

If you’ve never tried chrysanthemums before and you’re wondering, “what does chrysanthemum taste like?” we’ve got you covered.

Read on as we delve deeper into its taste profile and how you can cook and serve this amazing flower.

What is Chrysanthemum?

With its wide range of scientific names, Chrysanthemum, also called mums, are plants of approximately forty species, and all belong to Asteraceae (the aster family).

This herb was known to be cultivated in china in the early centuries, was used in various traditional medicines, and was added as a health ingredient for numerous food recipes.

The multi-purpose use of this medicinal herb dates back as far as three thousand years.

Today, people use it in various home medicines to cure various health issues like lowering blood sugar levels or as a food ingredient.

When mixed with other herbs, chrysanthemums are also used to treat various types of cancers, chest problems, headaches, fevers, and other serious conditions.

So combined with their beauty, the chrysanthemums offer human beings all the right benefits.

However, these gorgeous plants are rather poisonous for your pets and other mammals that you may interact with.

Therefore keep it away as far as you can from your loving animals.

What Does Chrysanthemum Taste Like?

Chrysanthemums have a lot of different varieties, and the taste and flavor profile may vary depending on the type you are eating or drinking and how you cook it.

The taste of this beautiful herb flower can range from being awfully sharp with a bitter aftertaste, to sweet or pleasant.

Some could also be tangy all the way to somewhat peppery.

A note to remember is that the less young and larger the chrysanthemums are, the more bitter they’ll be if you ever decide to eat them raw.

But if you got yourself some really young and fresh green chrysanthemums and you’ve decided on boiling them to use in your next recipe, they would have that herbaceous or grassy flavor profile with hints of sweetness all over them.

Yet, suppose we’re talking about teas.

In that case, some of the most popular chrysanthemum teas usually offer a moderately sweet taste profile, and the aromas are not overwhelming when compared to the other floral teas.

This is what makes Chrysanthemum tea a popular treat in East and Southeast Asia, but not limited to them.

However, the next time you visit a friend or a colleague and you notice a slight change in the taste profile of chrysanthemum tea to what we’ve explained here, they offer you one.

Don’t be surprised.

Since chrysanthemums taste rather mild, they can be very versatile, and it is common for people to add other herbs or ingredients, such as honey, to give them a sweeter taste.

So you can easily enhance their taste and flavor profile with the addition of other herbs or ingredients according to your preference.

How to Cook and Serve Chrysanthemums?

There are different ways to cook and serve chrysanthemums, but you have to identify each one before you use it in your recipes.

By this, we mean the ones you can boil and have by themselves are the chrysanthemum greens.

Though most of the greens are intense in flavor, people usually go for the fresh young ones that you can buy in any grocery store.

Splash on some sauce, put them into your favorite rice recipe, soups, or salads, and watch them give a herbaceous to mildly peppery taste profile.

On the other hand, the mildly sweet-tasting chrysanthemums flower teas can be found online or in any grocery store.

They come with different flowers, all marketed for having specific health benefits.

The most common teas are yellow, mild, and white chrysanthemum flower teas.

Each has different healing properties and tastes milder to stronger, with the wild Chrysanthemum being the most bitter.

You can drink it solo but also easily find chrysanthemum flower tea recipes, and the ingredients asked to use are usually to enhance the flavor of it for the best drinking experience.

Conclusion

While Chrysanthemums are used for various decorative purposes and to represent life itself and whole other different meanings in many cultures, this plant has been used for its medicinal effects and health benefits for years.

Today, the most popular form of consuming this wonderful flower is by brewing tea from it, which has many benefits for your body.

It is one of the best home remedies to treat various illnesses and prevent certain serious issues as well.

So if you ever get your hands on one, make sure to drink it to your heart’s content.

We hope this article answers all your queries.