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 a larger 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.
Sweeten and bottle
Mix 1 pound of sugar with 1 pint of the cherry juice until clear.
Add ½ cup of spirit to each bottle.
Pour the juice into the bottles.
Seal the bottles with corks covered in rosin.
Store in a dry, cool place.
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 tart fruit juice that gives the shrub its main flavor and acidity.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the sour juice and balances its acidity while helping preserve it.
- Spirit
- Adds alcohol that helps preserve the mixture and contributes aroma.
The step that matters
Set the pot in boiling water without letting water reach the cherries. Gentle heat from the outer pot draws juice out of the fruit slowly. Water entering the pot would dilute the juice and weaken the flavor and preservation.
“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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