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Drink

Cherry Shrub

A sweetened cherry liqueur made by extracting juice from cherries, sweetening, adding brandy, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Remove the stems from the cherries.

  2. Place the cherries in an earthen pot.

  3. Place the earthen pot in an iron pot filled with water.

  4. Bring the water to a boil, ensuring no water enters the cherries.

  5. Pour the extracted juice through a flannel bag to separate it from the pulp.

Sweeten and bottle

  1. Sweeten the juice to your taste.

  2. Let the juice become clear.

  3. Add ½ cup of brandy to each bottle.

  4. Pour the juice into the bottles.

  5. Seal the bottles with corks covered in rosin.

Store

  1. Store the bottles in a dry, cool place.

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. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Morello cherries
Supply the main fruit flavor and the tart acidity of the shrub.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the shrub and contributes warmth of flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice to balance its tartness.

The step that matters

Keep water out of the cherries while the water boils. Water entering the earthen pot would dilute the juice and weaken the shrub's flavor. Setting the pot in boiling water heats the cherries gently and indirectly, drawing out juice without scorching it.

“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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