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Elder Flower Syrup

A syrup made by infusing elder flowers in clear syrup, then strained and optionally mixed with spirit or diluted with thin syrup and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and spirit work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 141 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Elder Flower Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Pick elder flowers and infuse them in clear syrup for 3 weeks to 1 month.

  2. Strain the mixture and bottle it.

Dilute and store

  1. Dilute the syrup with thin syrup and add the juice of 1 or 2 lemons, then freeze.

  2. Mix the syrup with spirit.

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. Syrup + spirittop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + spirittop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Elder flowers
Provide the floral aroma and flavour that the syrup carries.
Clear syrup
Sweetens and draws the flavour out of the flowers during infusion.
Thin syrup
Adds sweetness and dilutes the infused syrup to a lighter strength.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Infuse for the full 3 weeks to 1 month. Floral aromas are released slowly into sugar syrup, so a shorter infusion gives a weak, thin flavour. Steeping for the whole period lets the flower compounds fully dissolve into the syrup.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, spirit):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, spirit. 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.

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