Elderberries
The elderberry crop, like the blackberry crop, has been magnificent, but there is apparently nothing the English want to do with it except make wine or catch roach. Why do we eat the blackberry, which in some continental countries is viewed with pious horror, and neglect a fruit which is as handsome as the grape? The probable answer, I should say, is that the elderberry stinks a little. The fruit has a faint touch of the acrid and unpleasant odour of the wood, which in turn recalls its only use, the pea-shooter. But Americans, I understand, regard the elderberry rather highly, and there are one or two interesting elderberry-sauces made in the Midlands. One of these, Pontack sauce, has behind it an interesting history. Pontack's was a famous London eating-house of Stuart times, and Mr. Maurice Healy has told how it was at this house that Pepys first drank Had Brion (which he called Ho Bryan . . . ). After the Oreat Fire, Monsieur de Pontac, who owned the "Chateau Haut Brion," set up the eating-house that became known as Pontacks, where one of the specialities was a hot wine sauce served with roasted ortolans.
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