Most lavender flower buds are edible. Culinary lavender (English cultivars) such as Melissa, Royal Velvet, Purple Bouquet, Avice Hill, Flogate, Buena Vista, and Miss Katherine tend to be sweeter with a floral fragrance, and are used for cooking and baking. While hybrid lavender cultivars such as Grosso, Phenomenal, Impress Purple, Gros Bleu, Edelweiss, and Super have more of a camphor flavor and are used in soaps, lotions, and savory dishes. Many published recipes for lavender lemonade, lavender syrup, jam, and cookies don’t specify which lavender cultivar was used. However, knowing the cultivar is critical as you do not want a camphor flavored lemonade or chocolate bar. Ultimately, you should taste different cultivars and determine what cultivar you like the best. For cooking and baking, use 1/3 the quantity of dried buds to fresh buds. The key to cooking with lavender is to experiment, starting out with a small amount of buds, and add more to taste. You should only purchase your culinary lavender buds from reputable lavender growers and resellers. After de-budding the dried lavender stems we double clean all culinary buds with our Clipper 2B, which are then frozen for 7+ days to kill potential pests.