Of Elderflowers, Roses and Lemon Verbena

Thank you so much for all your kind and enthusiastic comments about my crochet fly-curtain. The weather has tailed off somewhat since finishing it but I am pleased to report that on those occasions when the sun has shone and the door has been open, the curtain has done "what it says on the tin" and has kept pesky, flying visitors well and truly Out. Which augurs well for future sunny days, as and when we get them.

Although it has not been very summery the last few days, the elderflowers are nevertheless boldly coming out in the hedgerows here. The wide, shallow flower-heads with their creamy, delicate blossoms, overflowing with sweet scent, remind me of shallow champagne-goblets, perched among the green leaves. They beckon me to leave my desk and get out and pick them for elderflower cordial before the heavy thunderstorms, forecast for later today, batter them down and soak the fragile flowers, beyond use. I took the hint. This morning they are still new and dry and drifting with golden pollen - perfect for making cordial. Most cordial recipes caution against washing the flowers after picking. I had assumed this was because in washing you would lose the perfume and the water that would cling to the flowers would add unnecessary extra liquid to your mixture. I discovered today, while researching one or two variations, that actually the chemical composition changes in the flowers, when they are wet. Negatively so. You only want to immerse them at the point of infusion, not before. No idea why this should be, but they do smell different in the rain and perhaps that's why. I don't wash them anyway but this is just an added incentive not to bother.

Anne floated the idea of infusing rose petals with the elderflowers for cordial in her post here and this seemed to me to be an inspiration of sheer genius. (Not uncommon with Anne in the kitchen, I have to say.) My new-last-year Gertrude Jekyll rose is a bit green and youthful still and her flowers have been hanging, slightly sadly, from her young and whippy stems, which are not yet up to the job of supporting them in a more upright position. Nudging me to pick them to enjoy them properly, rather than leaving them to trail on the ground. I've picked some to put in a vase and been enjoying them all week.

The scent is breath-taking.

As is the colour.

What about pairing that scent (and colour) with the elderflowers? What about it indeed!

As with making rose petal jam, it's a good idea to snip off the white part of the rose petals as these can be bitter so all the white tips, like the one in the pic, got snipped off before I poured on the bubbling-hot sugar syrup.

I now have two batches of elderflowers infusing in the kitchen, one with rose petals, one without, and the scent is headily distracting.

Despite the vagaries of the English summer about which I was grumbling a few weeks back, there is something about the scent both of elderflowers and old-fashioned roses that makes all my grumbles about the lack of warmth and sunshine evaporate.

The essence of summer. In your face, literally.

Do you make your own elderflower cordial? If you don't, I recommend having a go, with or without experimental variation. It is extraordinarily easy and, personally, I find it a marked step-up from the commercial variety, as well as being cheaper, of course.

There are lots of recipes for elderflower cordial. It's child's play and boils down to the following:

1 Pick the flowers.
2 Pare and squeeze a few lemons.
3 Boil up a simple sugar syrup.
4 Pour the hot syrup over the flowers and lemons.
5 Cover and leave for twenty four hours.
6 Strain and bottle / freeze.
7 Drink diluted with water (and / or something alcoholic)

For more detailed instructions of how I go about it, you can find the recipe that I use here where I posted about it last year. The frozen cordial keeps beautifully for a year or more. I know because this week I have been drinking the last of the batch I made last June.

The rose variation on the elderflower theme has sparked one or two other possibilities for experiment - elderflower partnered with lemon verbena, for example. Apparently very good indeed with gin. As I have recently planted out some little lemon verbena plants, I am wondering whether, if the thunder and rain will just hold off a smidgeon longer, I might have time to pick some more flowers for a third batch. I think I might!

I have no idea as to quantities with these variations. For the rose one, I picked four generous Gertrude Jekyll roses because these were the flowers drooping lowest that would otherwise see out their days sweeping the flowerbed and because Anne said two were insufficient in her initial experiment. They have partnered about twenty seven elderflower heads. The lemon verbena plants are new and not very bushy as yet, so I didn't want to pick too many leaves off them. A generous handful of the aromatic, pointy, green leaves leaves with half a lemon sliced up for good measure, to eighteen elderflower heads is what I ended up with for this batch.

The kitchen now looks (and smells) like some kind of summery alchemist's cave with assorted pans and bowls emitting similar, but subtly different, fragrances from beneath their lids. I keep going in there, just to breathe them in. I hope no one wants any rice with their chilli con carne this evening - all my big pans are now occupied! Oops!

Wishing you a cordially happy (and flowery) weekend!

E x