Elderflower season

It’s Elderflower season again, and that can only mean one thing: more great free stuff from nature. If you haven’t already grabbed a bucket and hit the hedgerows, let me take a few minutes to clue you in on Elder and what you might be missing.

Native Elder (Sambucus nigra) lives pretty much anywhere. It’s as happy growing along roadsides as it is in gardens and it’s rife in cities, parks and wasteland which makes it fantastic for urban foragers. In summer it produces flat, dinner-plate heads of delicate, fragrant, white flowers and in autumn it produces rafts of dark round, edible pavement-staining berries. It’s so common that you probably walk past it everday without giving it a second thought.

It’s been said that Elderflower defines our British summer – the season starts as it blooms across the country and fades only when the last berries have fallen. It’s also commonly believed to be completely poisonous which is probably why so many people give it a wide berth.

Truth is, the flowers and berries are not only edible but delicious. They have a unique flavour – part musk, part grape – that’s instantly familiar to anyone who’s ever drunk the cordial. In case you haven’t tried it, Elderflower cordial is about the closest thing you can get to a sweet, perfumy, white wine without actually buying a sweet, perfumy, white wine. And Mixed in with ice, water and any cheap, below-par white wine it makes one of the best summer drinks you can get.

That poison tag isn’t entirely undeserved though. Elder leaves and bark contain a cocktail of chemicals including cyanides that can make you pretty sick, so no chewing on the wood! Make sure to only use the flower heads and berries, and for safety i’d suggest cooking the berries when you use them.

The best Elderflowers are picked when they’re white and newly opened. The older creamy ones are riper and have a faint smell of cat-pee about them – not that this should put you off. That litter-basket fragrance doesn’t make it into anything you cook or brew with the flowers and we’re only after the fresh ones anyway. Pick the fresh heads and leave the creamy ones alone to finish their work so that (come autumn) we’ll have a good harvest of berries to play with .

Dodgy bark aside; chemically, Elder is pretty spectacular. It’s probably this that gave rise to the folklore that surrounds it and explains why it’s been so revered throughout history. It’s credited with both supernatural and healing powers – used over the years to ward off evil; planted to deter witches;and used to make wands and flutes to summon spirits. The fairy kingdom supposedly rate the plant highly. The fairy king and queen pass under it on midsummers eve.

So what do our science friends have to say about it?

Research shows that as well as being high in vitamin C, the berries contain powerful neuraminidase inhibiting chemicals which have been proven to ward off or lessen the symptoms of flu. (The inhibitors act by gluing up the receptors on the flu virus that it uses to enter healthy cells and belong to the same class of chemicals used in Tamiflu.) Elderberry is also credited as relieving asthma and – As if that weren’t enough – you can also boil up the leaves and spray the liquor on plants to deter carrot fly and cucumber beetle.

So apart from warding off evil, fighting flu, and beetle battling, what else can you do with it?

For a start, Elderflower is one of the quintessential tastes of summer. Use it in desserts (like elderflower and lime jellies) or in glazes (try honey, wine, mustard and elderflower on lamb). For an old english classic, try cooking the flower heads as fritters. Just dip them in pancake batter, cook till just golden and sprinkle with sugar. Alternatively, make enough cordial to last and keep summer going all year.

The cordial can be used to whip up sorbets or to add a dash of summer hedgerow to all your fruit reipes (try a splash in your apple pie filling). I’ve already mentioned using it in a spritzer (a tip I can’t recommend enough) but to show off, you can also use it to make an elderflower martini with gin, cordial, lemon zest and ice.

There’s a couple of links below for classic Elderflower cordials that i’m going to be trying out over the weekend.

So thats our flu-busting, evil-fighting, cordial producing Elder. Summer’s here! Grab your buckets and go get picking.

Elderflower cordial recipes here and here.