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Pineapple Rum Shrub

A sweetened pineapple vinegar drink flavored with rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and rum work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 451 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pineapple Rum Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the rum

  1. Chop the pineapple finely without peeling it and place it in a glass jar.

  2. Cover the pineapple with the best Jamaica rum, seal the jar, and let it stand for three days.

Make the syrup and juice

  1. Boil the sugar and water together until clear to make a syrup.

  2. Strain and cool the syrup.

  3. Squeeze the juice from the limes or lemons.

  4. Strain the juice.

Combine and bottle

  1. Strain the rum from the pineapple.

  2. Press the fruit to extract all its juice.

  3. Mix the cold syrup, fruit juice, and the pineapple-infused rum with an additional quart of Jamaica rum.

  4. Bottle the mixture 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. Pineapple + rumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lime + rumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  5. 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
Its fruit flavour and juice add aroma and sweetness, and its juice adds acidity-balanced fruitiness.
Sugar
Sweetens the shrub and balances the acidity of the citrus juice.
Jamaica rum
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the pineapple and gives the drink its base spirit character.
Lime or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Infusing the pineapple in rum for three days. Alcohol extracts flavour compounds from the fruit over time. Leaving the pineapple unpeeled and fully covered lets the rum draw out aroma and flavour evenly, so the infusion should not be rushed or left with fruit exposed above the liquid.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, 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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