Sensory analysisThe sensory panel was carried out in April 2012. Eighty-sevenfree-tasters (37 males and 50 females, mean age 38 years) wererecruited by adverts among the university community (students,teachers, other staff, etc.) from the Department of Agriculture, Foodand Environment of Pisa University.In order to evaluate only the real sensory profile of the variousflowers, it was decided to get the tasters to examine the flowerswithout any condiments, bread, crackers, etc. After a careful eval-uation of the perceived flavors, the tasters were asked to fill out aquestionnaire aimed at determining the performances of the edibleflowers. These experiments were based on previous experiences oftaste evaluation performed on vegetables (Zhao et al., 2007) and/orfruits (Tobin et al., 2013).Five different organoleptic characteristics (spiciness, sweetness,softness, scent, bitterness) were included in the evaluation schemeand were expressed in a scale of 1–100. The data enabled the sen-sory profile to be highlighted with spider plots (Johansson et al.,1999). A synthetic evaluation (scale 1–10) for each flower was alsorequired in order to establish the effective degree of appreciationof each species. Finally, tasters were also asked to determine whichknown food each of the flowers resembled.