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Elder-Flower Water
To five pounds of flowers take one gallon water and onehalf ounce rectified spirits. Distil off a half-gallon.
This is a distilled floral water — a hydrosol — of the kind once kept in every dispensary and many pantries, used to flavour creams and syrups and as a skin wash. It is a proportion rather than a procedure, and it assumes you own a still.
- The quantities in modern termsOne gallon is 3.8 litres if American, about 4.5 litres if imperial; half an ounce of rectified spirits is roughly a tablespoon. Five pounds of elder flowers is a very large amount — the blossom heads are almost weightless, so this is bushels of them. The ratio scales down cleanly: 1 lb flowers to a pint and a half or so of water, collecting half the volume.
- What rectified spirits areNeutral alcohol at roughly 95 percent, sold now as high-proof grain spirit or laboratory ethanol. The recipe does not say why it is added; the quantity is too small to affect flavour or strength, and official distilled waters sometimes carried a little spirit, though half an ounce in a gallon can do little as a preservative.
- Flowers onlyUse the creamy open florets, shaken free of insects and stripped from the green stalk. Elder stems, leaves and unripe berries contain cyanogenic glycosides; green material in the still is generally said to give an unpleasant vegetal smell and has no place in the flavouring.
- Pick at the right momentElder flower is generally reckoned to lose its muscat character quickly after cutting, and heads that have begun to drop their florets are often described as smelling unpleasant. Distil the same day, on a dry morning after the dew has gone.
- Distil gentlyThe flowers sit in the water, so this is a water distillation, and the point is a slow, cool run — a fast boil scorches the flowers and pushes vegetal notes into the receiver. Stop at the stated half-gallon; what comes over after that is watery and dilutes the aroma you have collected.
- You need actual apparatusA glass or copper pot still with a proper condenser. Improvised stovetop rigs with sealed lids build pressure and are a poor idea; if you have no still, an infusion of elder flowers in cold water, strained after a few hours, gives a related if less keeping-worthy flavour.
- Yield and keepingHalf a gallon of finished water, which is a great deal — a teaspoon or two flavours a custard, a jelly or a glass of gooseberry syrup. Bottle full, cap tight, keep cool and dark, and expect the scent to fade over a few months.
- LegalityOwning and operating a still is regulated in many countries regardless of what you put in it. Check local rules before buying equipment.
Distilled waters were the workhorse flavourings and cosmetics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: rose, orange-flower, cherry-laurel, peppermint and elder all appear in household books and in the official pharmacopoeias, elder flower water as aqua sambuci. Sambucus nigra grew in hedgerows and churchyards across Britain, so the raw material cost nothing but the labour of picking, which is why a recipe can open with five pounds of flowers without apology. The water was valued in two directions at once: in jellies and gooseberry dishes, where elder flower's muscat note is often said to have stood in for grape, while the same bottle served on the dressing table as a wash for the complexion. Its appearance in a fruit book, tucked among the berries, reflects the fact that elder was treated as a single useful plant: flowers in June for water and fritters, berries in September for wine, jelly and syrup.