Name: Shrub
Ingredients: 1 quart orange juice, strained; 2 lb loaf sugar; 9 pints rum or brandy; peels of half the oranges

Why it works: Orange and rum work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 801 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Shrub

Ingredients

1 quart orange juice, strained
2 lb loaf sugar
9 pints rum or brandy
peels of half the oranges

Directions

Make the shrub

Combine orange juice, loaf sugar, rum or brandy, and orange peels in a large container.
Let it stand overnight.

Age and bottle

Strain the mixture and pour it into a cask.
Shake the cask four to five times a day for four to five days.
Let it stand until clear, then bottle it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together801 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,908 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Orange juice: Supplies the citrus acidity and fruit flavour that define the shrub.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the orange juice.
Rum or brandy: Acts as the spirit base and preserves the mixture during steeping.