The Scent of Summer
Gathering elderflowers (our basketful is pictured below)...and making "sirop de fleur de sureau" for the first time, with help from little hands...
Chère amie, cher ami,
“Someone might think we are related to each other,” murmured the little girl. She slipped her hand into mine. We were chez l’épicier to buy sugar.
Seven-year-old Frederika is the only child of dear friends, footloose expatriates living in Buenos Aires. Her mother is a classicist and her father writes novels. The three of them have been traveling en famille in Europe for several months. After they left us, they flew to London and then took the train up to Edinburgh. And we just had a postcard from the Canary Islands.
“Frederika has been to 36 airports since we left the apartment,” said her father, gazing at her proudly.
Now, she was curled up in a chair in the library, drawing her favorite animal. The tiger on the page of her notebook resembles Hello Kitty, a cuddly if unreal version of the savage beast of the jungle. She talks to it while carefully copying it from a book. Next to her were four dolls, princesses in Disney’s “Frozen” franchise.
Frederika is a good traveler. She knows how to keep all her things in a backpack. She fills her imagination with companionable creatures. And she seems to know how to extend her family when she has the opportunity.
The little girl and her parents arrived a few weeks ago, when the elderflowers were in full bloom. The frothy disks are dazzling white, spangling the green hedgerows and the shadowy edges of the woods. On a sunny day, their golden stamens give off an enchantingly sweet, fresh perfume. It is the scent of summer.
Frederika noticed them almost immediately. She was collecting flowers. I had my basket and scissors.
“Not those white ones!” I told her, alarmed, as she reached for the creamy umbel of the spectacular berce, a wildflower so tall that the stalk towered above the child. The sap of the plant burns the skin, especially when exposed to the sun. Frederika snatched her hand away and looked up at me somberly. She looked down at her bouquet with suspicion. But the blue spikes of wild campanula and the white daisies are innocuous.
Above the ditch and bank where the wildflowers grow is the hedge, a profusion of hawthorn, oak seedlings ruggedly pushing for the light, hazel, brambles covered with soft green drupes, and sureau, the elder. The latter grows as a small tree or a shrub, with thick, elastic, pulpy stems. The Romans called it "sambucus" from the Greek word for “an Asiatic wind instrument, possibly a flute.” The stems of the elder are hollow. Presumably, shepherd boys and girls of those ancient times improvised a wind instrument from the dried stalks.
“Oh, yes,” said Frederika knowingly. “That was Arcadia.
“It’s like Arcadia here,” she added, looking around pensively. In the distance, the ruddy cattle seemed to be sleeping on their feet, or lying down. They were ruminating after grazing all morning. The pastures are green. The fields are full of ripening wheat.
We had looked up “sambucus” in the old Littré dictionary in the Chateau’s library. The word became “sabucu” in the Italian peninsula and lost a few more consonants to become “seü” in ancien français. The Normans, in their patois, added an “r” at the end, giving “seür.” And by the 14th century, the diminutive “eau” was added, making “sureau.”
I wondered aloud about the flute etymology. “Sureau” sounds to me as if it’s related to the word “sueur,” meaning “transpiration” in French. The dried flowers are a known sudorific.
“Do you mean “sweat”?” asked Frederika.
Indeed. An old remedy for la grippe, the flu, is to drink three cups a day of tisane made with dried elderflowers, for “une grippe qui transpire est une grippe qui guérit!” Flu that sweats is a flu that gets better!
Insect life amid the leaves and flowers of the "sureau." Page from an 18th-century botanical treatise in the Bibliothèque National in Paris.
Linneaus, the great 18th-century botanist who created the first organized method of classifying plants, named the little tree Sambucus nigra, black elder.
“La voici!” exclaimed Frederika, who is picking up a little French.
“Le voici, ma petite!” I corrected. A good French tata never lets a grammatical error slip just to be sociable. Trees and plants are masculine in French.
“But I heard your farmer say “la coudre” for the hazel bush that he wants you to cut down, and you said “la vigne” for the grape vine.”
En bien! Petits chaudrons, grandes oreilles. Little pots, big ears.
These, I explained, are exceptions. “Coudre” is an old Norman word for noisetier, the hazel tree. It does not obey the rigorous logic of the French language. And “la vigne,” well…it’s such an ancient word that you might call it gender fluid.
I am sorry to say that Frederika very slightly rolled her eyes.
“It comes from the ancestral proto-indo-european word "wóyh" for “wine”,” I added hastily.
Frederika absorbed this information with equanimity. She was pulling down a springy branch of elder, inhaling the heady odor of its bright white flowers.
“Can we pick these now?”
Frederika held the basket while I started to snip. We took only the most perfect flowerheads: those whose petioles, the tiny individual flower in what botanists call the inflorescence, were fresh, fragrant, and white. We moved from one part of the hedge to another, selecting and snipping until we had a full basket of lacey white blooms. Bees hummed around us, assiduously collecting the golden pollen.
Our neighbor Ranehault has given me a recipe for “sirop de fleur de sureau,” elderflower cordial. Mixed with sparking water, a crémante, or le gin, the sirop makes a refreshing concoction for a hot summer day. She also pours it on ice cream or fromage blanc with raspberries, over rhubarb tart and strawberries and cream.
Ranehault’s recipe came from her mother and her mother’s mother. I’ve had it for three years, tucked into a cookbook.
“Haven’t you gathered the flowers yet?” had asked Ranehault for the last two summers.
The other day, Ranehault brought over one of the ingredients, in case its lack was holding me up. With grateful guilt, I accepted the little jar of acidecitrique. It acts as a natural preservative of color and flavor, in case the lemon juice and sugar are not sufficient.
“I see you have lemons on the citronniers,” she said. “Do you need bottles?” Assured that I had the necessary, she bicycled briskly back out through the gates of the château.
In the château kitchen, Frederika and I set down the basket of flowers on the counter. We removed woody stems. We examined each flowerhead for stray beetles and other unwelcome guests. One does not rinse the flowers, Ranehault had instructed. That would remove the fragrant yellow pollen.
In the large copper bassin I use for confitures and marmelades, gêlés and compôte, we mixed sugar and water, bringing it just to a boil, then letting it cool. Frederika went to the Orangerie for ripe lemons from the lemon trees. While the syrup cooled, we cut up the fruit. We added them to the syrup with the citric acid. Finally, while I strewed the flowers over the surface of the syrup, Frederika stirred with a big wooden spoon.
Ranehault had explained that the mixture must macerate for 24 hours in a cool corner of the kitchen. Impatient, Frederika darted into the kitchen from time to time to lift up the dish towel that covered our ripening concoction.
At last, it was time to decant our cordial. We strained out the flowers. The liquid, pale golden, was delectable, fragrant and sweet. Frederika took a small pitcher and scooped it up, pouring it into old limonade bottles.”
Later that day, as the heat lifted and the air began to cool, we gathered on the lawn in front of the château. The shadows of the trees slanted across the grass.
Frederika helped me with the honors. Some had our cordial with un gin, others with an unassuming vin mousseux from the Loire. Frederika tried it with sparkling water. We added sprigs of mint from the garden.
“Delectable!” we all cried.
“And the aroma…exquisite!” exclaimed her father. “The scent of summer!”
Frederika smiled demurely. She slipped her hand into mine.
Our friends left the next day. On the mantel of their bedroom, a pair of doll’s boots in pink plastic were left behind. They belong to one of Frederika’s princesses.
We put them aside. Like the elderflower cordial, these will keep for another season…and another visit.
A bientôt au Chateau,
Elisabeth
Frederika displays our cordial in the making. Florets of elderflower and slices of lemon float in a syrup.
P.S. Elder grows in North America as well as the British Isles and Europe. You might like to try Ranehault’s recette, Sirop de fleur de sureau, or Elderberry Cordial
Assemble ingredients:
Sugar…2 lbs
Water…half a gallon
Citric acid…2.5 teaspoons
Lemons…2, cut in quarters
Elderflowers…20 to 40 perfect flowerheads
Mix sugar and water and bring to a boil. Cool.
Mix in quartered lemons and citric acid.
Drop in flowerheads and stir.
Let macerate for 24 hours.
Strain and pour into bottles.
Keep in refrigerator.
As always, Heather and Beatrice (info@chateaudecourtomer.com and +33 (0) 6 49 12 87 98) will be happy to help you reserve your holiday or special gathering at the Farmhouse or the Chateau. We still have a few openings for this year and are taking bookings through 2024. Please feel free to call or write us.