Holunderblütensirup

Every May, the elder trees along the Salzach start blooming and the whole city smells like it's been dipped in honey and lemon. That's when I know it's time. I close the restaurant early one afternoon, take a basket, and go picking. The blossoms don't wait. You get maybe two weeks, three if the weather is kind, and then they're gone for another year.

In my grandmother Eva's kitchen in Kent, Gretel kept a bottle of Holunderblütensirup in the fridge from June until it ran out, which was never later than August. She mixed it with cold soda water on warm afternoons, poured it over Topfenpalatschinken, stirred it into Prosecco when company came. It was the taste of early summer preserved in a bottle, and making it was a ritual neither she nor Eva ever skipped.

The process is almost absurdly simple. You steep fresh elderflower heads in a sugar syrup with lemon and a little citric acid, leave them alone for two or three days, then strain and bottle. No cooking of the blossoms themselves. The heat would drive off exactly the fragrance you're trying to capture. You dissolve the sugar in hot water, let it cool, then add the flowers. They do the rest. The citric acid is what gives the syrup its shelf life and that clean, bright finish that keeps it from tasting cloying.

This is Austrian home cooking at its most honest. Good ingredients, barely any technique, and all the patience in the world. If you've never made Holunderblütensirup, this is the year. Go find an elder tree. They're everywhere if you start looking.