Start with a Dry Morning and a Quiet Hedge

Elderflower is the one forage where timing matters more than almost anything else. The season is short — usually the last fortnight of May and the first three weeks of June in southern England, a shade later in Scotland and on high ground — and the flowers turn quickly once they are past their best. Pick on a dry morning after the dew has lifted but before the sun grows hot, roughly between nine and eleven. A wet head carries grit and diluted pollen; a tired, browning head smells of damp socks rather than the muscat-and-lychee perfume you are after.

Go slowly through the hedge rather than stripping the first bush you meet. Elder likes sunny, disturbed edges — field corners, old railway cuttings, the lane between two parishes — and a good stand will have some bushes a fortnight ahead of others. Choose heads that are fully open, flat and creamy, with a few tight buds still in the middle. Leave anything drooping, brown-fringed or smelling bitter.

How to Identify Elder with Confidence

Elder (Sambucus nigra) is a shrubby small tree with corky, fissured grey-brown bark and soft, pith-filled stems that snap easily. Its leaves are pinnate — five or seven oval leaflets with serrated edges — held in opposite pairs along the stem. The flowers sit in broad, flat-topped umbels, each tiny bloom a five-petalled star no bigger than a thumbnail nail, massed into plates the size of a saucer or larger.

The giveaway is the smell: sweet, musky, faintly of elderflower cordial already. Crush a flower head between your fingers and it should perfume your hand for the rest of the walk. Two plants cause most confusion:

• Rowan or mountain ash: similar creamy umbels, but no elderflower scent and different, pinnate leaves with toothed leaflets and red berries later. Harmless, but not what you want.
• Hogweed and giant hogweed: white umbels, but with huge, deeply cut leaves and thick hollow stems. Giant hogweed sap causes serious burns in sunlight. If the plant is taller than you and the leaves are enormous, walk away.

Cow parsley and other umbellifers are also white and frothy, but their heads are lacy, not flat plates, and they lack the elder's scent. If in doubt, leave it.

Picking with Care — for Cordial and for Wildlife

Take a pair of scissors and cut the head cleanly just below the umbel, keeping a short stalk to hold. Snip rather than tug, so you don't tear bark or loosen whole branches. Shake each head gently over the hedge to dislodge hoverflies, beetles and the occasional ladybird, then lay the heads flat in a basket or cardboard box rather than a plastic bag — they bruise and heat quickly when crowded.

Don't wash elderflowers. The pollen is where much of the flavour and perfume lives, and rinsing it away leaves you with a thin, grassy infusion. If a head is dusty from a busy lane, pick elsewhere next time.

Forage with the hedge in mind as much as the kitchen. Elderflower is a magnet for hoverflies, solitary bees and beetles, and the berries that follow in September feed blackbirds, song thrushes, starlings and fieldfares. Take a few heads from the sunniest side of many bushes rather than clearing one, and leave at least half the umbels on every bush you touch. Remember, too, that hedgerows are nesting habitat between March and August — disturbing an active nest is an offence, and a hedge full of chirring young is best left alone. Always seek the landowner's permission, and avoid busy roadside verges, sprayed arable edges and nature reserves.

Elderflower Cordial: The Classic

Make cordial the day you pick, while the perfume is still keen. This quantity fills about two one-litre bottles.

• About 25–30 good flower heads, stalks trimmed
• 1kg caster sugar
• 1.2 litres water
• 2 unwaxed lemons, zest pared and juice squeezed
• 30g citric acid

Warm the sugar and water in a large pan until the sugar dissolves, then bring just to the boil and take it off the heat. Let it cool for ten minutes — pouring boiling syrup over the flowers cooks away the very thing you are trying to capture. Add the lemon zest and juice and the citric acid, stir, then submerge the elderflower heads. Cover and leave somewhere cool for 24 hours, no longer than 48, stirring once or twice.

Strain through a double layer of muslin, then through a jelly bag if you want it truly clear. Bottle in sterilised bottles and keep in the fridge. The citric acid is doing real work here: it sharpens the flavour and helps the cordial keep for several weeks. Dilute one part cordial to five or six parts chilled water or sparkling water, and try a spoonful in a gin and tonic or over strawberries.

Vinegar and Other Useful Infusions

If you have more flowers than you can use for cordial, pack a clean jar loosely with heads and cover with cold white wine vinegar or cider vinegar. Seal, leave on a sunny windowsill for a fortnight, shaking daily, then strain and bottle. The result is a fragrant vinegar for salad dressings, potato salads and pickled radishes, and it keeps for a year or more.

Elderflower also infuses beautifully into vodka, into a light sugar syrup for sorbets, and into gooseberry jam, where a handful of heads tied in muslin lifts the whole pan. In the garden, if you are lucky enough to have an elder of your own, cut it hard in late winter — down to about knee height every few years — and it will throw fat, vigorous flowering growth at picking height rather than disappearing out of reach.

Elderflower Fritters, Fried Lightly

Fritters are the quickest, most generous way to eat elderflower, and they take ten minutes from batter to plate. Make a thin batter from 100g plain flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt and about 150ml of very cold sparkling water or lager, whisked just until smooth. It should coat the back of a spoon thinly.

Heat a pan of sunflower or rapeseed oil to about 180°C — a cube of bread should colour in thirty seconds. Holding each flower head by its stalk, dip it into the batter, let the excess drip away, and lower it flower-side down into the oil. Fry for two or three minutes until pale gold and crisp, turning once. Drain on kitchen paper and dust generously with caster sugar while still hot. Eat immediately, with a squeeze of lemon, a spoonful of the cordial drizzled over, or a small glass of something cold. They do not wait.