Ingredients · Flower

Blue Mallow

Malva sylvestris · Malvaceae (mallow family)

Blue Mallow
Reddish-purple petals with dark stripes that do something no other ingredient in this shop does: brewed on their own they give a blue-violet cup, and the colour shifts when you add something acid. That is not a trick — the flowers' pigment is pH-sensitive enough that a tincture of them was used as a test for alkalis. Squeeze lemon into a mallow infusion and it turns pink in front of you. Seven products carry it, and in a blend it is there for that colour and for the soft, slightly slippery body the plant's mucilage gives the cup.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partFlower
KindFlower
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromEurope, North Africa, Asia (native range)
TasteVery mild and faintly sweet, with a soft, slightly slippery body from the plant's mucilage

How to use it

Brewed alone for the blue cup, which is the party trick — and then acidulated with lemon to turn it pink. In a blend it contributes colour and a soft mouthfeel rather than flavour. Do not use boiling water if you want to keep the blue; it dulls quickly.

With food

Lemon, which changes its colour. Honey. Anything delicate enough not to bury it.

With spices

Lemon peel. Rose. Lavender. Cornflower, for a blue that holds against a blue that shifts.

With tea

White tea and light greens, where the colour reads. Rooibos. Lemon balm and lemongrass.

Its story

Where it comes from

Native to western Europe, North Africa and Asia. Also called common mallow, high mallow, tall mallow and, from the seed pods children used to eat, cheeses. No lot origin is named in our notes.

What happened

Mallow is a plant people ate before they brewed it. The young leaves and shoots are edible raw or cooked, and across the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East it is still a wild food plant: in Egypt the leaves go into khobeiza, a winter stew; in Morocco, Tunisia and Palestine they are steamed with garlic and tomatoes and eaten as a salad. Its flowers were spread on doorways and woven into garlands for May Day. Mrs Grieve wrote in 1931 that it had been much superseded by marsh mallow, its more famous relative, but was still a favourite remedy with country people.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

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