Why it works: Sugar and spirit work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Cherry Shrub
Ingredients
Directions
Extract the juice
Remove the stems from the cherries and place them in an earthen pot.
Set the pot in an iron pot of boiling water, ensuring no water enters the cherries.
Once the juice is extracted, strain it through a thick cloth bag to separate the juice from the pulp.
Make the syrup
Mix 1 pound of sugar with 2 cups of juice until clear.
Bottle and seal
Add ½ cup of spirit to each bottle before pouring in the juice.
Seal the bottles with corks covered in rosin.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together602 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Morello or red sour cherries
- Provide the juice and tart fruit flavor that forms the base of the shrub.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the juice and balances the tartness of the sour cherries.
- Spirit
- Adds alcohol that carries aroma and helps keep the bottled shrub stable.
The step that matters
Keep water out of the cherries during the water bath. If boiling water seeps into the earthen pot, it dilutes the cherry juice and weakens its flavor. Keeping the pot sealed off from the water lets the fruit release its own juice, which gives the shrub its concentrated taste.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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