SAFFRON Over the millennia, saffron has remained amongst the most costly of substances, frequently challenging gold for the top spot. Why? For the past thousands of years, it has been credited as the best flavouring of foods and wines, as the most effective remedy for some ninety-odd ailments, as the best way of ensuring your health, your libido, your status and your body odour, and of course, as the best, richest yellow dye for foods, textiles and your skin. Cleopatra (we are told) bathed in a hot saffron tub before meeting Anthony (to mention just one!), emerging with a golden glow and all her buttons pressed and ready for action! Remember Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film? Richard Burton stood no chance! Alexander the Great also bathed in saffron, but to heal his many wounds, and recommended his troops to do the same. Pay scales were obviously different in those days. At the time of the Black Death (mid-14th C) saffron was in great demand as the only cure, notwithstanding the fact that by then, all the European saffron farmers had been killed off by the plague. Sources of saffron in the Islamic world were not obtainable, so soon after the Crusades.
But hold on, we are getting ahead of ourselves here. What is saffron? Next time you see a crocus, look for the stigma and styles. If they are a bright crimson in colour, be aware you may be looking at a serious source of income, always accepting that you will need quite a lot of them before approaching the world market. You will need about half a million little stigmas, from about 150,000 flowers to make a kilo of saffron – but each kilo will earn you about $5000. Note the acres of crocuses in Iran (above) where 90% of world production comes from. 25
