Why Bother Making Your Own?

There is something quietly satisfying about opening the fridge on a warm afternoon and pulling out a bottle of your own elderflower cordial, the colour of pale straw and smelling faintly of summer hedgerows. Shop-bought squashes are perfectly decent, but they are built for shelf life and cost, not flavour. When you make your own, you control the sweetness, the acidity and the strength of the infusion. You can use the glut of blackcurrants from the garden, the rhubarb that has gone slightly mad in the allotment, or the mint threatening to take over a corner of the border.

Best of all, it is genuinely simple. If you can make a cup of tea and stir sugar into it, you already have most of the skills required.

The Four-Part Formula

Almost every cordial follows the same structure, and once you understand it you can improvise freely. You need four things: sugar, water, acid and flavour.

• Sugar — caster or granulated is fine. Sugar does more than sweeten; it preserves the cordial and carries the flavour. As a rule, use 500g of sugar to 600ml of water for a syrup that keeps well and dilutes cleanly.
• Water — plain tap water is perfectly good. If your area has very hard water, filtered is slightly better for delicate floral flavours.
• Acid — this is what makes a cordial taste bright rather than flat. Use the juice of one or two lemons, or around a teaspoon of citric acid powder per 500ml of finished syrup. Citric acid is available in most supermarkets and chemists, usually near the baking or home-brew sections.
• Flavour — fruit, herbs, spices, citrus zest, or a combination. This is where the fun lies.

The method is straightforward: warm the water and sugar until the sugar dissolves, add your flavourings, leave them to steep, then strain, add the acid, and bottle. The steeping time and temperature do most of the work.

What’s in Season, and When

Building your cordial habit around the seasons is half the pleasure, and it means you are always working with produce at its best and cheapest.

• Late spring — elderflowers, picked on a dry sunny morning when the scent is strongest. Use the heads only, and shake out the little insects first. Rhubarb also works beautifully, simmered gently with a strip of orange zest.
• Early summer — strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries. Soft berries need only a brief steep; too long and the flavour turns jammy.
• High summer — blackcurrants, redcurrants, blackberries, mint by the armful. Blackcurrants benefit from a gentle simmer to release their depth.
• Autumn — damsons, plums, apples, quince and rosehips. These darker fruits make rich, almost wine-like cordials that are wonderful diluted with sparkling water and served over ice.

Herbs, Spices and the Art of the Steep

The difference between a good cordial and a memorable one usually comes down to the aromatic extras. Fresh herbs should be treated gently. Mint, lemon verbena, basil and lemon thyme are best added to the hot syrup off the heat and left for no more than twenty to thirty minutes, then strained. Leave them longer and you will extract bitterness rather than perfume.

Woody herbs such as rosemary and bay can take a longer steep, and a single sprig of rosemary with pear or apple is a lovely combination. Spices need heat to open up: ginger, cardamom pods, star anise, cinnamon sticks and cloves all benefit from being simmered in the syrup for ten minutes before you add the fruit. Crack cardamom pods and slice ginger thinly so the flavour actually escapes.

A useful trick is to taste as you go. Spoon a little syrup into a glass, top with sparkling water, and adjust. More acid? A squeeze of lemon. Too sharp? A little extra sugar dissolved in. This is far more reliable than following a recipe blindly, because fruit varies enormously in sweetness from week to week.

Bottling, Storing and Keeping It Safe

Sterilise your bottles properly — a hot wash followed by a spell in a low oven, or a rinse with sterilising solution and a thorough air-dry, is what you need. Pour the cordial in while it is still warm, seal, and label with the date and flavour. Unopened, a sugar-rich cordial will keep for several months in a cool dark cupboard. Once opened, refrigerate and use within three to four weeks.

If you would rather not use much sugar, you can reduce it, but be aware the cordial will not keep as long and may separate. A good compromise is to freeze lower-sugar cordials in ice cube trays and drop a few cubes straight into a glass of sparkling water.

Serving Ideas and Simple Variations

The classic dilution is one part cordial to four or five parts sparkling water, but this is only a starting point.

• Top elderflower cordial with sparkling water and a slice of cucumber for something extraordinarily refreshing.
• Mix blackcurrant cordial with hot water in winter for a soothing alternative to tea.
• Add a spoonful of raspberry cordial to a glass of dry cider or white wine for a simple summer spritz.
• Freeze mint or lemon verbena cordial into ice lollies for children.
• Use ginger cordial as the base for a homemade ginger beer, topped with plenty of ice and lime.

Start with one fruit you love, keep notes on what you did, and adjust next time. Within a season or two you will have a small repertoire of house cordials that taste of your own kitchen and your own garden — and nothing from a supermarket shelf comes close.