ELDERFLOWER CORDIAL
Elderflower season may be over, but if you have a bottle of the cordial in the cupboard, you can keep the flavour going all year long. Along with strawberries, elderflower is the smell of English summertime. It’s floral, but also ‘green’ (it’s enhanced by lime juice) and has a whiff of nettles and gooseberries. Many fragrant ingredients can be rather sickly, but not elderflower. I collect blossoms every year to make cordial. As soon as I realised there were loads of elder trees near my home, I was out with the secateurs. The individual flowers look like tiny stars; en masse, they create huge, frothy clouds of blossom. There are few activities more bucolic than an afternoon spent picking elderflowers. I always end up feeling like a character in a Mary Wesley novel. You can, of course, fall back on shop-bought elderflower cordial. I never manage to make enough for the whole year, so I supplement my supply. It used to be a rather recherché ingredient, but no longer. Commercial cordials vary in strength, though (especially supermarket own-label varieties), so do bear that in mind. I always use
