Elder Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Pick off the elder berries and bake them in a stone jar.
Strain through a coarse sieve to extract the juice into a clean kettle.
Make the syrup
Add 1 pound of fine soft sugar to every quart of juice.
Boil and skim the mixture until clear.
Pour the syrup into a jar, cool it, and cover it.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Elder juice
- Provides the main liquid and the characteristic flavour of the syrup.
- Fine soft sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and, once boiled, thickens it and helps preserve it.
The step that matters
Boil and skim the mixture until clear. Sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must be boiled long enough to reach a syrupy concentration. Skimming removes foam and impurities, which would otherwise cloud the syrup and shorten its keeping quality.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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