saffron

UK/ˈsæfɹən/US/ˈsæfɹən/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,997 of 15,258neutral

Saffron is the world's most expensive spice, made from a red thread inside a crocus flower. Three threads per flower, picked by hand.

That is the whole reason for the price, since it takes something like a hundred and fifty thousand flowers to make a kilogram. It gives a deep yellow colour and a distinctive smell, and it is essential to paella, risotto alla milanese and a great deal of Persian cooking. A few threads are enough. The word also names the colour, and saffron robes are worn by Buddhist monks.

Definitions of saffron

1nounsaffronAn orange-yellow spice made from the dried stigmas of a crocus.B2+
“A pinch of saffron turns the whole dish gold.”

Where it comes from

Middle English
saffron
English, today
saffron

From Middle English saffron.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Food & Drink, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 3 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

saffron in the wild

Saffron is a spice derived from the sterile autumn-blooming flower of Crocus sativus, commonly known as the "saffron crocus".
Saffron
Several wild species of Crocus are known to have been harvested for use as saffron.
History of saffron
The chemical structure of crocetin forms the central core of crocin, the compound responsible for the color of saffron.
Crocetin
Crocetin is usually extracted commercially from gardenia fruit, due to the high cost of saffron.
Crocetin
Larger versions baked in a loaf tin are known as saffron cake.
Saffron bun

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

← Vocabulary