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Currant Shrub

A sweet currant syrup made by boiling currants with sugar and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Squeeze the ripe currants into a kettle.

  2. Add 1 pound of sugar for each quart of currant juice.

  3. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes, skimming off any foam.

Finish and store

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then add ½ cup of brandy for each quart of juice.

  2. Bottle the mixture and seal the corks.

  3. Store the bottles; the flavor improves with time.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Currants
Provide the tart juice that forms the base of the shrub.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances its acidity.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the mixture and contributes aroma.

The step that matters

Boiling and skimming the mixture. Boiling dissolves the sugar fully into the juice, and skimming removes foam so the finished shrub stays clear and smooth.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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.

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