Gooseberry and elderflower: two seasons that barely overlap
The elder flowers in the first week of June and the gooseberries on the single bush by the fence are not ready until the second week of July, so the two never meet in the garden. The trick, which took me two years to think of, is the freezer. On the 4th of June I picked a dozen heads of elderflower on a dry morning, shook out the insects, and froze them flat in a bag. They go grey and limp when they thaw but the scent survives, which is all the jam needs.
Gooseberries came in at 1.6 kilograms on the 15th of July, picked wearing a gardening glove on the hand that holds the branch, because the bush has thorns like a wire brush. Topping and tailing took most of an hour. The fruit went into the pan with 300 millilitres of water and simmered for 15 minutes until the skins burst and the flesh went to pulp. At that point I turned off the heat, dropped in six of the frozen elderflower heads tied in a square of muslin, put the lid on and left it for 20 minutes. Longer and the flavour starts to taste of cat, which is a thing people say about elderflower and which turns out to be true.
The muslin came out, 1.6 kilograms of sugar went in, and the jam boiled hard for about eight minutes to a saucer-test set. Gooseberries are generous with pectin and I did not need lemon. The colour went from green to a soft pinkish amber during the boil, which happens with gooseberry jam and startles people the first time. Yield was nine 340-gram jars.
The result is a sharp, bright jam with the elderflower sitting just behind the fruit, noticeable rather than loud. It is the household’s favourite by a wide margin and the jars go first every year. Six flower heads is the right number for this quantity; the first year I used ten and it was perfume rather than jam.
The remaining frozen elderflower will go into a cordial in August, which has nothing to do with preserving but uses up the bag. The gooseberry bush has been given a thank-you mulch and a stern look about its thorns.