Skip to main content
Drink

West-indian Pineapple Shrub

A fermented pineapple syrup made with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,841 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

West-indian Pineapple Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Remove the crown from the pineapple, pare it, remove the eyes, and chop it very fine.

  2. Put the chopped pineapple and its juice into a narrow-necked bottle or jug.

Ferment

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar and 4 quarts of cold water, then shake the jug for 5 minutes.

  2. Let the jug stand at about 90°F (32°C) for 2 to 3 days, or until it begins to ferment.

  3. Once fermentation starts, cool the shrub on ice and use it.

Optional freeze

  1. Optionally, mix in a freshly pared and grated pineapple and ½ pound more sugar, then freeze in an ice-cream freezer.

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. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and juice, and its sugars feed the fermentation.
Sugar
Sweetens the shrub and provides the sugar that yeast and bacteria ferment.

The step that matters

Letting the jug stand until fermentation begins. The stand time is set by fermentation, not the clock. Warm temperature drives the process, and the mixture must be checked so it ferments as intended rather than spoiling. Cooling on ice afterward stops further fermentation and keeps the flavour from turning too sharp.

“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.

You might also like

Pineapple LemonadePineapple Lemonade18 recipesPineapple PunchPineapple Punch18 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes