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Drink

Cherry Shrub

A preserved cherry beverage made by mashing cherries, boiling, straining, sweetening, and adding brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherries

  1. Pick and mash the Morella cherries.

  2. Place them in a jar and set the jar in a pot of boiling water for 2 hours.

Strain and sweeten

  1. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

  2. Sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the mixture and add a little brandy to each bottle.

  2. Seal air tight and keep in a cool place.

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

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

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

Morella cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and juice for the shrub.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the tart cherry juice to taste, balancing its acidity.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the bottled shrub and contributes aroma.

The step that matters

Sealing the bottles airtight. Air exposure lets the mixture spoil and oxidise over time. Airtight sealing and cool storage slow microbial growth and keep the flavour fresh, and the brandy adds some preservative effect.

“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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