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Drink

Currant Shrub, White or Red

A sweetened vinegar drink made from currants, sugar, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Currant Shrub, White or Red

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Place the currants in a jar and cover it tightly.

  2. Submerge the jar in a large pan of cold water.

  3. Simmer gently until the juice flows freely, about 1.5 to 2 hours.

  4. Strain the juice into a bowl.

Finish and bottle

  1. Stir the sugar into the warm juice until dissolved.

  2. Add the rum and mix well.

  3. Strain again and bottle for use.

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 + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  2. White currant + rumtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the tart fruit juice that forms the base of the shrub.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the tart juice and balances its acidity.
Rum
Acts as a preservative and carries the fruit aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in a water bath. Gentle heat in a water bath draws out juice slowly without boiling the fruit. Vigorous boiling can cloud the juice and cook off flavour, so keep the water at a simmer rather than a rolling boil.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum. 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 currant shrub recipes

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