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Elderberry Brandy
For each gallon of berries allow a gallon of brandy and let stand a month before using. Spice may be added if wished.
A one-line infusion recipe of the kind that assumed the cook already owned a demijohn and a hedge full of elder. The proportions are given by volume, not weight, and everything else is left to judgement.
- Scale it downA gallon of berries to a gallon of brandy is simply equal volumes, so the ratio works at any size: two cups of destemmed berries to two cups of brandy fills a quart jar with room to spare. A gallon of loose elderberries runs roughly 4 to 5 lb once stripped.
- Strip the stems completelyElder stems, leaves and green twigs contain cyanogenic compounds, and unripe berries carry them too; the fully ripe fruit is the only part wanted. Freeze the clusters for an hour and the berries comb off the stalks with a dinner fork far faster than picking by hand.
- Know the bushThis means black elder, Sambucus nigra or the American S. canadensis, with flat-topped clusters of purple-black fruit. Red elder, which carries its berries in a cone-shaped cluster, is not used for this and should be left alone.
- Only fully ripe fruitGreen or half-coloured berries in the jar give a harsh, faintly bitter infusion. Pick when the whole cluster has gone dark and the stems have begun to redden and droop under the weight.
- The brandyAny 80-proof grape brandy works; household brandy of the period was often rougher than what is sold now, which may be part of why spice was offered as an option. A mid-price VS cognac or American brandy is the sensible choice, not something you would drink neat with pleasure.
- Spice, if you use itA stick of cinnamon, three or four cloves and a strip of orange peel per quart is a workable proportion. Cloves in particular take over quickly, so taste at two weeks and pull the spices out before the fruit if they are dominating.
- Vessel and storageGlass with a tight lid, kept in a dark cupboard; elderberry pigment fades in light and the fruit acids will attack bare metal. Shake it every few days during the month.
- After the monthStrain through a sieve, then again through muslin, and press the berries only gently or the liquid goes cloudy. The result is dry, not a cordial. Sweetened fruit-and-spirit infusions of this type were often called ratafia; for that, sugar is stirred in after straining, on the order of 4 oz per quart, and it needs another few weeks to marry.
The elder has long been among the most thoroughly used hedgerow plants in English domestic practice: flowers for cordial and fritters, berries for wine, rob, ketchup and vinegar, and the whole shrub credited with medicinal virtue out of all proportion to the evidence. Elderberry rob, a thick boiled syrup of the juice, was a standard winter remedy for colds in English and American households well into the nineteenth century, and steeping the fruit in spirit was the alcoholic cousin of the same idea, half medicine and half after-dinner drink. Brandy infusions of this kind were common enough that cookbooks felt no need to say more than the proportions; the technique of covering fruit with spirit and waiting was assumed knowledge, as it was for cherry bounce, sloe gin and blackberry cordial. Entries like this one turn up because elder grew wild and free, and a household with more berries than use for them could bottle them.