The sweet smell of Fez in Spring

One of the most wonderful things about spring in Fes is the glorious smell of orange blossom that hangs in the air for a few weeks. That time isn’t far away now, and in fact you can already see a few baskets of blossoms for sale in medina streets. Still tightly closed, these buds are sold by the kilo for around Dh30. Our Special Affairs Editor Helen Ranger reports:

R’cif market is the best place. In a couple of weeks’ time there will be huge baskets of orange blossoms and bunches of camomile flowers, closely followed by rose petals.


Four years ago, Lumen went searching for the rose fields in the High Atlas mountains around El Kelaa M’Gouna. Expecting to find fields of neatly ordered plants such as you might find in the hills above Grasse in France, around St Paul de Vence, she was startled to learn that the rose buds here are all from untended hedgerows.

Instead of a vast agricultural industry, the famous rose maroc essential oil comes from these wild plants that bloom but once a year. Some are dried for use all year round, and some are used to make rose otto essential oil. (The word otto in English comes from the Arabic word for perfume, itr.) It’s virtually impossible to find such otto in Morocco as it’s mostly spirited away to France to be used in perfumes and cosmetics. But locals are left with the by-product, the beautiful rosewater that they use in cooking and to make cosmetics.


Wandering about in the medina now, just before the blossoms start to appear on the streets, you might come across men making and selling some strange-looking silver contraptions with various protuberances. These are stills, and every home will have one. If the family is very poor, they’ll rent one for the season. Lumen bought the smallest one and half a kilo of orange blossoms, and spent a fragrant couple of hours making floral water.


Here’s the method if you’d like to try it for yourself. Fill the bottom of the still with hot water. Then put the pierced pot over the water and fill with plant material. Cover this with the top layer of the still and fill up with cold water. You’ll need cork bungs for the pipes, wrapped in tape or cling-film. Put a jug under the curved pipe and light the gas to heat the water. The steam in the bottom container will rise through the plant material in the next layer and condense on the conical ‘ceiling’ of the top layer, which is kept cool by the cold water.

Fragrant molecules of the plant material are found in the steam. The steam condenses back to water which then runs down the curved pipe and drips into the jug. When the water in the top pot gets hot, removed the bung, drain it out and add more cold water.

After about an hour, you can change the water in the base pot. Floral water from a second distillation won’t be as strong, but no matter. Use the first distillation as a skin tonic or in cooking. The second quality is wonderful sprinkled or sprayed around the house, on your hands before eating, or sprayed onto freshly laundered linen.

Photo credit: Helen Ranger

Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news