I've made elderflower cordial for a couple of years now and every year that I make it, I think 'I should have just made lemon syrup and saved myself a lot of time and trouble'.
I've tasted commercially produced cordials from Europe and they don't seem to be nearly as 'lemony' as the stuff we make at home here. The commercially prepared cordial tastes like elderflower with a bit of lemon for tartness. Yes, it does have some 'artificial flavors along with the natural ones, but it tastes a lot better than the 'lemon with floral undertones cordial' that the internet recipes produce.
Almost every recipe that I've seen calls for 3 or 4 whole lemons. That's a lot of lemon. Most recipes also call for boiling the flowers, or at the very least, using boiling water. The floral properties of the elderflower seem so fragile and delicate, that it I think that they're easily destroyed by heat. Flowers that are sweet and fragrant going in to the 'dunk' don't seem to transfer their lovely properties to the hot syrup and the overpowering lemons become prominent Of course, you need a little tartness to balance the saccharine sweetness of the syrup, but we're after a balance here, not a lemon syrup with a few floral undertones.
If you didn't read my earlier blog about how to handle fresh elderflowers, here's a recap:
-Pick elderflowers that are more cream-colored and less green-colored. You'll be able to compare the flowers on the tree to understand this. The greener flowers have unopened buds and won't add flavor.
-Make sure the flowers aren't dropping off the coymb. If they are, that head of flowers is too old. Leave them to produce berries for later use.
-Don't pick the flowers, put them in your pack, and continue on a few hour hike. The flowers will develop an unpleasant odor. Bring them home and refrigerate them.
-Don't rinse the flowers prior to using them. You'll wash away a lot of the delicate pollen which is where a lot of flavor comes from. Just shake them gently to get the bugs out. You'll find other bugs as you process the flowers and be able to remove them then, too.
-Remove all the green stems. Don't worry about the tiny white pedicles that hold the flowers on the stem. Yes, I know that seems like a big chore, but once you get the technique down (hold the blooms between your middle finger and forefinger and snip-snip-snip with the scissors) it goes pretty quickly. If you leave many green stems on, they add a 'rank' flavor to whatever your making. Besides, everthing on an elder other than the blooms and the berries are toxic.
-When you've cleaned out your bag, you may find quite a bit of pollen sticking to it's sides and bottom. Be sure to add that to whatever it is that you're cooking. The pollen adds flavor and is responsible for a lot of the sunshine color in your cordial.
For the cordial:
Use between 20 and 30 flower heads. Flower heads vary in size of course, so just use your judgement. You want to leave plenty of blooms for berry production, so take your blooms from several trees.
Make about 8 cups of simple syrup (1:1) and let it cool to about 100 degrees.
Pour it over the prepared flowers (see above).
Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. If you like, add a bit of lemon rind, but don't go overboard. Actually, you caould add all kind sof citrus instead of lemons. Try blood orange. Try limes. Try a Meyer lemon.
Add 2 teaspoons of citric acid. (Both the citric acid and the lemon juice helps to balance out the flavor of the cordial and the citric acid also acts as an anti oxidant to help preserve the color and as a natural preservative.
Cover and let macerate for 2 days.
Strain.
At this point the cordial is perfectly good to bottle. But I wanted to 'amp' up the elderflower flavor, so I did a sort of 'double-infusion', which sounds more complicated than it is. I gathered another 20 heads of elderflower, prepared them, added them to the syrup that I just strained and let them sit for another two day. If you wanted to add the tiniest bit of vanilla bean here, it would be a good time.
After sitting for two days, strain again and bottle.
This should keep about 4 months in the refrigerator If you wanted to reheat the strained cordial and then water-bath can for a longer shelf life, note that you will lose a bit of the beautiful color and scent. But it will still taste darn good. And not over-lemony.
The jar on the right has been through a water-bath. You can see that the heat has altered the color slightly.
