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Drink

Shrub

A fermented vinegar-based drink made with rum, orange juice, sugar, and orange rinds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and orange 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

10 gallons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine rum, orange juice, and sugar in a barrel.

  2. Soak the orange rinds in a little rum overnight.

  3. Strain the rum with rinds into the barrel.

Dilute and age

  1. Add enough boiled water to make 10 gallons.

  2. Stir the mixture twice daily for two weeks.

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.

  1. Rum + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

  2. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. 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

Rum
Acts as the base spirit and preserves the mixture while it steeps.
Seville oranges (juice)
Provides the sharp acidity and fruit flavour that define a shrub.
Loaf sugar
Balances the acidity and adds sweetness to the finished drink.
Orange rinds
Infuse aromatic oils from the peel into the rum for fragrance and bitterness.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rum, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More shrub recipes

Raspberry 59Currant 39Cherry 10Brandy 6Rum 6Lemon 3 See all 8 →

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