For a few weeks in June, the best cordial in Britain is free

Drive any British lane this week and you will pass it without noticing: the elder, in full creamy bloom, frothing over hedges and railway banks and the scrubby edges of car parks. For about three weeks, from late May to the middle of June, the most fragrant drink in the country is hanging there for nothing. Then it is gone until next year.

Elderflower cordial is the easiest thing the Kitchen Table will ask of you all summer, and one of the most satisfying. You pick a couple of dozen flower heads on a dry, sunny day — the scent is the test, the ones that smell of summer rather than the ones already turning. You steep them overnight with lemon and orange. You strain, sweeten, bottle. That is the whole of it. By the weekend you have a fridge door full of cordial that tastes of a hedge in June and cost you the sugar and an hour.

Here is why it belongs in tonight's edition. Picking elderflowers is, on any spreadsheet, a waste of an evening. It produces nothing you could not buy for three pounds. It is unpaid, unhurried, faintly absurd — a grown adult reaching into a hedge with a carrier bag. And it is, reliably, one of the loveliest hours of my year.

This paper keeps asking what we will do when there is less work to fill the day, and worrying at the answer. The hedgerow has a quiet reply. We will do this: small, seasonal, useful-but-not-really things, done with our hands, for the pleasure and the people we share them with. Not every unpaid hour is a lovely one — the figures say we spend a great many of them on housework and care, and that the load falls unevenly between women and men — but some of them are this. Foraging is the unpaid work that gives rather than takes.

Pick more than you need. Cordial is built for handing on: a bottle to a neighbour, a jug on the table while the late kick-off plays, a splash in a cold glass on the one warm evening we are promised. The flowers do not keep. That is the instruction the season is giving you — this is now, or it is next year.

At your table — an elderflower cordial that works. Makes about 1.5 litres. You want around 25 elderflower heads (shaken, not washed — the scent lives in the pollen), the pared zest and the juice of 2 lemons and 1 orange, about 1kg sugar, 1.5 litres water, and 50g citric acid if you have it (from a chemist; it sharpens the flavour and helps it keep, but it is optional). Boil the water and pour it over the flower heads and citrus zest in a large bowl; cover and leave overnight. Strain through muslin into a pan, add the sugar, the citrus juice and the citric acid, and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. Simmer for two minutes, then funnel into sterilised bottles. It keeps a couple of weeks in the fridge, or freeze it. Dilute roughly one part to five with still or sparkling water. (Method after River Cottage.)