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Raspberry Shrub

A vinegar-based raspberry preserve made by macerating berries, extracting juice, sweetening, boiling, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Raspberry Shrub

Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raspberry Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a new tin pan, cover the raspberries with vinegar and let stand overnight.

  2. Squeeze out the juice from the raspberries.

Make the shrub

  1. Combine 1 pound of sugar with 1 pint of the juice in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for one minute.

  3. Bottle the raspberry shrub as soon as possible.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raspberries
Provide the fruit flavour and the juice that forms the base of the shrub.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the shrub its tart, sharp character and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness and helps preserve the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for one minute. Boiling dissolves the sugar fully into the juice and gives a stable syrup. Stopping early can leave the sugar grainy, while longer boiling can drive off the fresh raspberry aroma.

“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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