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Saffron essentially contains three active ingredients:
- crocin, which determines the intensity of the colour,
- picrocrocin, which determines the power of the flavour,
- safranal, which determines the strength of the aroma.
In the chart on the right you can see a comparison between the saffron threads from San Gavino Monreale and an average quality commercial saffron powder (source E.R.S.A.T. - "Le piante aromatiche, officinali e l'erboristeria" (2001)).
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San Gavino
specimen
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commercial
specimen
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crocin (%)
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10.63 +/- 0.21
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5.92 +/- 0.28
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picrocrocin (%)
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20.26 +/- 0.13
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10.41 +/- 0.42
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safranal (%)
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3.19 +/- 0.35
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1.14 +/- 0.46
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Saffron is a perennial and sterile tuberous plant, with linear grass-like leaves and hermaphrodite flowers with purple petals. Its reproduction occurs in vegetative way by an asexual propagation of the corms (each corm, during the years, generates from 3 to 5 corms). A filamentous film cover them, their weight goes from 0.5 to 25 gs, their hight from 1 to 5 cms and their width from 0.5 to 4 cms. The corolla is tubular and contains 3 yellow stamens (male sexual organs) and 3 bright red stigmas or pistils (female sexual organs that can seldom be even 8), from which we get the spice.