Pontack Sauce

I have just made something which I'm not supposed to eat until 2018. Pontack sauce, a historic, English concoction based on Elderberries. Once made, the sauce must be bottled, and kept for 7 years before opening. I’ll be 27 before I get to try it. Prior planning indeed.

Apparently the sauce dates back to the 17^th century, where it was served at the Pontack’s Head Tavern in Lombard Street, London.  I scoured old cookery books for a recipe, but even Mrs Beeton failed to give me a recipe. So did Escoffier. Even Alan Davidson’s “The Oxford companion to food” skipped from Pond Apple (a type of custard apple from the American tropics) to Pont l’eveque (a cheese from Normandy). A quick Google search reassured me that I hadn’t made up the existence, or perhaps, once existence of Pontack sauce.

I wonder where the Elderberries used by Mr. Pontack himself came from? I’m pretty sure there aren't too many Elderberry trees growing in EC3 today.

I wanted my Pontack sauce to have a little history of its own, so I picked my berries from a hedgerow behind my house, on farmland which would have been cultivated by Anne Hathaway’s (Shakespeare’s wife) family.

Not knowing what Pontack sauce tastes like (and not being too keen on Elderberries at the best of times) I only picked a modist amount of berries, about 500g.

In a pan, I simmered 200ml of vinegar, ½ a slice onion, 500g golden caster sugar, finely chopped ginger, grated nutmeg, mace, and 2 star anise for a few minutes, until it began to thicken ever so slightly. Then the elderberries went in. I cooked it for perhaps 15 minutes, the berries had broken down to a pulp and the onions were soft and melting.

I strained the liquor from the pulp and re-boiled to kill any bacteria or yeasts which may have been lurking in the sieve or the bowl in which the sauce was strained into. A few more minutes boiling and I decanted the sweet, sharp, spicy sauce into a jar. The jar was too big, but very sterilized, so I hope it will be OK for its 7 year ripening.

On that note, is it going to “ripen” or “mature”, or “mellow”? Both the jar and the sauce were in theory free from any micro-organisms. But chutney is supposed to improve with age. On a chemical level I don’t know why??    

Anyway, Pontack sauce has been made, and I’m already thinking about opening it to eat with my Christmas Goose. I guess life is too short to wait 7 years for a sauce to be ready.