ISBN 1-903018-31-5 £9.99

Ria Loohuizen is a literary translator living in Amersterdam. Her passion for walking and cooking are combined in her four cultural-historical books on wild food. On Chestnuts and The Realm of the Ouince and the Fig will also be published by Prospect. She is currently working on a book about bitter herbs (and vegetables), Good Bitter Best, as well as her second book on wild mushrooms, Cèpe & Co.

Ria Loohuizen has pursued the elder into every corner of history, literature and kitchen usefulness. She claims this is only the second book on the tree (the first being published in 1644). In an evocative text, she explores its meaning, and gives maximum exposure to cosmetic and medical recipes, as well as delicious sweet dishes and drinks.

Here you may find how to make elder ointments or lotions to ward off rheumatism, and instructions for champagne, or syrup, or wine, plus for tarts, fools, jams, jellies, fritters, glazes and vinegars as well as some details about the Jew's Ear mushroom which grows only on the elder tree.

Foreword, by Gillian Riley 
Introduction

The botanical elder
The mythical elder
The useful elder
The healing elder

Gathering and storing
Drying
Preparing
Recipes for the home dispensary

Kitchen equipment
Weights and measures
Elderfiower recipes
Elderberry recipes
Jew’s ear mushroom recipes

A Gentle Caution

The recipes in this book are designed to please as well as instruct. However; the elder is not without power to cause discomfort. The recipes here are for the European elder (Sambucus nigra); other varieties, the mountain elder and the dwarf elder, are not edible although the American elder (S. canadensis) is.

Even so the berries of our elder should be cooked before eating. When raw, large quantities may provoke diarrhoea. The bark, too, is a harsh emetic For centuries, the tree has been known to pack an unexpected punch, as this note from Culpeper attests. Tread sensibly.

The first Shoots of the common Elder boyled like Asparagus, & the yong Leavs & Stalks boyled in Fat Broth, doth mightily carry forth Flegm and Choller. The middle or inner Bark boyled in Water and given to drink worketh much more violently; and the Berries either green or dry, expel the same humors, and is often given with good success to help the Dropsie. The Bark of the Root boyled in Wine, or the Juyce therof drunk, worketh the same effects, but more powerfully than either the Leavs or Fruit. The Juyce of the Root taken doth mightily provoke Vomit, and purgeth the watery Humors of the Dropsie.
 

‘Fragrant as pods of vanilla’ is Geoffrey Grigson's response to an Austrian recipe for elderflower
fritters - a bunch of the milky-white flowers still on the stem, dipped into batter and fried, served with a sprinkling of sugar. There are many more such delights in this book. The flowers, fruit, leaves and bark of this strange, appealing, but widely disliked shrub or tree, have gastronomical and medicinal properties which have been used for centuries. Poultices, cordials, remedies, and useful objects to ward off witches and evil spirits are derived from the elder; and the magic powers of the plant are celebrated in verse and legend.

My memories of a rural childhood in the Plain of York are redolent with the smell of the crushed bark and leaves of elder; unpleasant, but not a deterrent to the absorbing childhood occupation of making dens in hedgerows, creeping into the gaps between contorted elder branches (left growing by the hedgers and ditchers who knew full well that lopping and cutting elder trees would bring bad luck), twisting branches into apertures which became the windows and doors of secret little homes. Further south, in warmer climates, pungent young elder leaves were plucked and made into infusions and poultices, flowers dried and stored for use (the aroma sweetened and softened, more pleasing than the fresh blossoms, which can be overpoweringly rank). Many Renaissance recipes for elderflower fritters use reconstituted dried flowers, as Ria does here in her recipe for muffins on page 90. Maestro Martino used fresh blossoms, stirred into a mixture of cream cheese, hard cheese, flour and egg whites, diluted with milk, sweetened with sugar; and made up into round patties, fried in lard or butter. He added fresh elder flowers, carefully detached from their stems, to a similar mixture, flavoured with ginger, for an open tart, which he served sprinkled with sugar and rosewater. Scappi used dried flowers soaked in milk in a tart filling with pounded pine nuts, ricotta, egg whites, powdered white ginger, covered with a pastry lattice, crusted with sugar and rosewater Many of the recipes here remind us of these forgotten uses of a familiar blossom. The flowers make a pretty and fragrant garnish to fish dishes and salads.

The folk memories of the healing powers of elder, sambuca, were perhaps behind the choice of name, sambuco, for a sweet, potent (84 per cent proof) liqueur; alleged to be made from elder and liquorice, but tasting strongly of anise (almost to the exclusion of anything else). This was made commercially in Italy at a point when home-made cordials and liqueurs, part medicine, part lethal knock-out drops, were being replaced by industrial concoctions, and the name might have served to conceal the plebeian origins of the drink. We are safer ground with the elderflower wines and cordials here.

This is the first book in a series which presents familiar fruit, flowers and nuts in their cultural context, with plenty to read and recipes to cook from, to delight the mind and stimulate the appetite.

Gillian Riley