Recipe Elderberry syrup

[Wandering Bob]

Copied verbatim from “Food From Your Garden” (Reader’s Digest, 1977)

You need:

3kg of ripe elderberries
Sugar
300ml of water
6 cloves and a piece of root ginger
or
50g of ground cinnamon and 1 level tsp of allspice


Method:

Strip the elderberries from the stalks, wash them and discard any that are shrivelled.

Put the water and berries into a large earthenware bowl and break up the fruits by mashing them with a wooden spoon.

Strain the pulp through muslin or a jelly bag and, to each 60cl of juice, add 375g of sugar.

Put the sweetened mixture into a pan and simmer for 10 minutes, adding during this period, either the cloves and ginger or the cinnamon and allspice.

Pour into clean, warmed bottles, sterilise and seal.

 

[Morning Glory]

When are elderberries in season? I really must try to make some syrup and some Pontack this year. 3kg sounds like an awful lot of berries - they are tiny berries aren't they?

 

[Wandering Bob]

When are elderberries in season? I really must try to make some syrup and some Pontack this year. 3kg sounds like an awful lot of berries - they are tiny berries aren't they?

According to the erstwhile Reader's Digest book, in season between August and October. I don't think they're anywhere near ready yet but I'll go for a walk and have a look. I suspect the birds will have stripped the trees of fruit by mid-October here - so I was thinking of mid-September for a 'village production'.

Yes, they are small berries. I'd thought in terms of bucketfuls. We'd count the number of buckets of fruit we'd collected and work backwards to see what weight of fruit that represented - adjust the recipe accordingly, and have a target for the number of buckets we'd need to collect next year.

 

[Morning Glory]

According to the erstwhile Reader's Digest book, in season between August and October. I don't think they're anywhere near ready yet but I'll go for a walk and have a look. I suspect the birds will have stripped the trees of fruit by mid-October here - so I was thinking of mid-September for a 'village production'.

Yes, they are small berries. I'd thought in terms of bucketfuls. We'd count the number of buckets of fruit we'd collected and work backwards to see what weight of fruit that represented - adjust the recipe accordingly, and have a target for the number of buckets we'd need to collect next year.

Well that's alright if you have a village picking them. But it will be just me wandering the highways and byways of Maidstone...

 

[The Late Night Gourmet]

When are elderberries in season?

Apparently, they ripen in September, so there's time. I've never used them, but I will try this when I can get some.

I read that eating raw elderberries can cause nausea, but cooked elderberries are safe. I will remember this, since my first move whenever I buy food I haven't tried before is to taste it!

 

[oddduck]

Mom used to make elderberry jelly. Her, a few neighbors, all us kids would get hauled to a roadside ditch where the elderberries grew wild and we'd pick and then mom and gramma would make the jelly and everyone would have enough to last all year.