HISTORICAL
The Kwakwaka’wakw also produced an elderberry
paste by soaking the cooked elderberries, but rather
than storing the berries in water for several weeks, dried
berries were only soaked in water for the duration of
four winter ceremonial songs, at which point they were
mixed into a paste by hand, and eaten.
Another Taste
After several months in cold storage, I recently decided
it was time for another taste and removed the dried
elderberries from the freezer. The flavour had mellowed
with age, but I still detected a bitter aftertaste.
Taking the experiment one step further, I soaked
my fruit leather in water. Yellow-orange oil quickly separated and floated to the surface, and the water slowly
took on a similar colour. After an hour, I poured off
the water and added fresh water. This time the water
darkened much less, so I drained the water and sampled the remaining fruit paste. Initially a pleasant cranberry like flavour dominated but as it dissolved into my
mouth, I still caught a faintly bitter flavour from a few
small seeds that I failed to strain.
My experiment yielded a product with a distinctive flavour that, while still not exceptional, is growing
on me, and mixes well with other foods. What’s more,
red elderberries are remarkably nutritious. According
Dried red elderberries and red elderberry paste
66
WEST COAST WILD HARVEST
to tests conducted by Harriet Kuhnlein and Nancy
Turner, elderberries are 5 percent oil by fresh weight.
This is higher than any other Pacific Northwest native
berry they sampled, and must be considerably higher
when the fruit is dried.
Red elderberries certainly will never replace black
huckleberries or thimbleberries in my wild food diet,
but having found their true flavour, I can better appreciate their colourful bounty when they ripen next summer and will collect enough for some northwest coast
inspired chutney each year.
Warning: The roots, wood, bark, leaves, and to a
lesser extent, the raw flowers and fruit of red elderberry contain cyanogenic glycosides and should not
be eaten.
Abe Lloyd is an ethnobotanist and the director of Salal,
the Cascadian Food Institute, an organization committed
to sustainably integrating human communities and native
ecosystems.