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Rum Shrub, to Make

A citrus-based rum syrup made by infusing orange rinds, boiling with sugar, adding orange juice and rum, then filtering.

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

Rum Shrub, to Make

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Pour cold water over the rinds of the Seville oranges.

  2. Let them infuse for 1-2 days.

  3. Strain the liquid.

Make the shrub

  1. Boil it with the loaf sugar to create a syrup.

  2. Add the strained Seville orange juice and Jamaica rum to the syrup.

  3. Filter the mixture.

  4. Bottle it 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. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + rumtop 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

Seville orange rinds
Infused into the water to release aromatic oils and bitter, fragrant flavour.
Loaf sugar
Dissolves into a syrup that sweetens and balances the sharp citrus and rum.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to the finished shrub.
Jamaica rum
Provides the spirit base, adding depth, aroma and preservation to the shrub.

Swap the orange

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

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

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