Skip to main content
Drink

Elderberry Syrup

A syrup made by crushing elderberries, boiling with water, sugar, lemon, and spices, then cooling and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elderberry Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Crush the elderberries to a pulp.

  2. Add 1 quart of water to the pulp and strain through a flannel bag.

Make the syrup

  1. To the strained juice, add 2 pounds of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes, removing all scum.

Bottle

  1. Once cooled, bottle and cork the syrup.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Elderberries
Provide the main flavour and the juice that forms the syrup base.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils, helping it keep.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling and skimming the mixture. Boiling for the full 10 minutes concentrates the syrup and helps it keep. Removing the scum as it forms keeps the syrup clear and stops impurities from spoiling the finished bottled product.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, nutmeg, ginger, clove):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, ginger, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipes