Holunderblütensirup-Limonade

Holunderblütensirup-Limonade belongs to late May and June, when the elder bushes open along garden fences, field paths, and railway edges. In the south you hear Holler as often as Holunder, and cooks argue for apple juice, wine, or Bowle, a wine-and-fruit punch, before they agree on anything. For Limonade I keep it plain: blossoms, lemon, sugar, water. The hedgerow kept for summer.

The technique is not boiling. You pour hot syrup over clean blossoms and lemon, then let it steep cold and covered. Boil the flowers and you drive off the perfume, and what stays behind tastes green and flat. Das braucht seine Zeit. A day in the cold syrup pulls out the scent without cooking it away.

Pick only open, creamy flower heads on a dry morning, before hard sun burns off the aroma. Shake them for insects, don't wash them under the tap, because the yellow pollen is the flavour and water takes it with it. Strain through cloth, bottle clean, and mix the Limonade to taste with cold sparkling water. Nicht aus dem Glas, not from the bought bottle. This one starts at the bush.