How to make elderflower cordial

Identifying elder

Never eat or drink anything foraged unless you are certain of the identification. A web page cannot make you certain: use a reliable field guide, or learn from somebody who already knows the plant.

Elder — Sambucus nigra — is a woody shrub or small tree, not a herbaceous plant. This is the single most important distinction: it has bark, and its stems are woody and often quite thick. The dangerous lookalikes in the carrot family, including hemlock and hemlock water dropwort, are green-stemmed herbaceous plants that die back each year.

The leaves are pinnate — five to seven toothed leaflets arranged in pairs along a stalk with one at the tip — and they smell unpleasant when crushed, faintly of cat. The flower heads are flat-topped and creamy white, with the head branching from a single point, and the individual flowers are tiny and five-petalled. The smell is sweet, musky and slightly catty at close range.

If the plant you are looking at has a green, hollow, ridged or purple-blotched stem and finely divided feathery leaves, it is not elder. Walk away.

Picking

When

Late May into mid-June in most of Britain, and only about three weeks. Later flowers give a weaker, sometimes musty cordial.

Time of day

Late morning on a dry, sunny day, once the dew has gone. The aroma is strongest then and the pollen is dry.

What to pick

Fully open, creamy heads with the flowers still crisp. Avoid heads that are browning at the edges or dropping.

Where

Away from busy roads. Elder grows readily on waste ground and hedgerows.

Do not wash them

The aroma is largely in the pollen and washing takes it away. Shake each head to dislodge insects instead.

How many

Around twenty to thirty heads for a batch made with a couple of litres of water.

The method

Steeping rather than boiling, because the aroma is volatile. FoodHQ does not publish keeping times or preservative quantities for home-made cordials. Those are safety numbers rather than matters of taste, and in the UK the Food Standards Agency is the authority — follow its guidance on sterilising bottles and on storing, refrigerating and freezing what you make.

1. Shake the flower heads well and pick off any obvious insects. Trim away as much of the thicker green stalk as you can — stalk gives bitterness.
2. Make a syrup: dissolve sugar in hot water and let it cool until it is warm rather than hot. Boiling water poured onto the flowers drives off much of what you picked them for.
3. Pare the zest from unwaxed lemons and slice the fruit. Add zest, slices and citric acid if you are using it.
4. Add the flower heads and stir gently to submerge them.
5. Cover and leave to steep somewhere cool for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Longer extracts more, and past about three days it starts to taste stewed.
6. Strain through muslin, without forcing it, into sterilised bottles.
7. Taste before bottling and adjust with more lemon if it is cloying. Elderflower needs acidity to stop it being flat.

What to do with it

• Diluted with cold water or sparkling water, which is the point of the exercise.
• With gooseberries. The seasons overlap by a fortnight and the pairing is close to perfect — a splash in a gooseberry fool or compote.
• In a jelly or a panna cotta, where the flavour carries beautifully.
• Poured over strawberries with a squeeze of lemon.
• In a sorbet or granita, undiluted or barely so.
• Frozen in ice cube trays, which is the sensible way to keep a large batch beyond the season.
• In a drink with gin, prosecco or soda and a lot of ice.

Common questions