A Short Season Worth Waiting For

Elderflower season is fleeting. In the south of England it can begin in the last week of May, while in Scotland you may still be picking in early July. The whole thing lasts perhaps three or four weeks in any one spot, so it pays to keep an eye on a few favourite hedgerows from mid-May onwards. The reward is a flavour that no shop-bought bottle quite matches: muscat, honey and something faintly grapey, captured in a syrup you can keep for a year.

The single most important rule is timing. Pick on a dry, warm morning once the dew has lifted, ideally between about ten and noon. Flowers picked in the rain or heavy dew taste weedy and dilute, and wet heads go brown quickly in the basket. Sunshine coaxes the scent out, and the scent is the whole point. If you can smell elderflowers on the air before you see them, you have found a good bush.

Finding and Identifying Elder

Elder (Sambucus nigra) is a scruffy, generous shrub of hedgerows, field edges, railway embankments and waste ground. It rarely grows alone, so where there is one there are usually several. The flowers sit in flat-topped, saucer-shaped umbels the size of your palm, made up of hundreds of tiny, five-petalled cream flowers. The leaves are pinnate, with five to seven oval, sharply toothed leaflets, and they have a distinctive smell when crushed that people describe either as cat-like or faintly rank. The bark is grey-brown and corky, marked with little ridges.

Two cautions are worth remembering:

• Dwarf elder (Sambucus ebulus) looks similar but grows low to the ground, has pinkish anthers and flowers later. Leave it alone.
• All other parts of the elder plant — leaves, stems, bark and roots — contain cyanogenic compounds and should never be eaten. Only the flowers and cooked ripe berries are used in the kitchen.

If the flowers are creamy, faintly domed and strongly perfumed, and the bush is shoulder-height or taller, you have ordinary elder.

Picking Well and Picking Kindly

Avoid busy roads. Elder growing within fifty yards of a main road will carry traffic grime and particulates that no amount of steeping removes. Avoid field margins that look sprayed, and keep away from railway land, where herbicide use is routine. Verges alongside quiet lanes, old churchyards, allotment edges and the sunny side of a woodland ride are far better.

Take a basket or a wide shallow box rather than a plastic bag — bagged heads sweat, bruise and ferment within an hour. Snip whole umbels with scissors or secateurs, leaving a short stem to hold. Only pick fully open, freshly opened heads; tight green buds never open well in the bowl, and older brown-tinged heads taste tired. Take no more than a third of what you find on any one bush, and leave the rest for the birds and the insects. Blackberries and elderberries depend on those flowers.

Elderflower Cordial

This is the classic and the easiest thing to make well. You will need about twenty large flower heads, 1.5kg of granulated sugar, 1.5 litres of water, two unwaxed lemons and 50g of citric acid. A bucket, a big pan and a large bowl will do.

Give the heads a gentle shake over the hedge to dislodge beetles and spiders, then pick out any stray leaves. Do not wash them. Bring the water and sugar to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves, then pour the hot syrup over the flowers in a large bowl, along with the pared zest of both lemons and the lemons themselves sliced. Cover with a clean cloth and leave somewhere cool for twenty-four hours, or forty-eight if you want a fuller, deeper flavour. A cold steep of the same length gives a fresher, more floral result, but the hot version keeps longer.

Strain through a double layer of muslin, squeeze gently, then stir in the citric acid dissolved in a little warm water. Bottle in sterilised bottles. Dilute roughly one part cordial to five parts water or soda, with plenty of ice, a mint sprig or a slice of cucumber. It freezes well in ice cube trays, and it makes a fine addition to a gin and tonic or a gooseberry fool.

Elderflower Fritters

For a lighter, more immediate pleasure, fry the flowers themselves. Choose eight to ten small, perfect heads, leaving a short stalk as a handle. Whisk 100g plain flour, one tablespoon of cornflour and a pinch of salt with about 150ml of cold sparkling water or lager until you have a thin cream, the texture of single cream. Let it stand for ten minutes.

Heat a centimetre of sunflower oil in a deep frying pan to about 180°C — a drop of batter should sizzle and rise within a second or two. Dip each head in the batter, let the excess run off, and fry for a minute or so on each side until pale gold. Drain on kitchen paper, dust generously with caster sugar, and eat at once with lemon wedges, or with honey and a spoonful of cream. The stems are for holding only; discard them. Serve them warm from the pan, because they lose their charm the moment they cool.

Using and Keeping the Harvest

Beyond cordial and fritters, elderflowers infuse beautifully into white wine vinegar, runny honey and vodka. Elderflower champagne made by wild fermentation is a joy, but bottle it in plastic bottles, kept cool and opened carefully, or you will be scraping it off the ceiling. Dried flowers store for a year in a dark jar and can be added to teas and custards. However you use them, keep the harvest gentle and leave the hedgerow as generous as you found it — then there will be flowers again next June, and the blackberries in autumn too.