Name: Raspberry Shrub
Ingredients: 4 quarts red raspberries; 1 quart vinegar; 1 pound loaf sugar (or granulated)

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

4 quarts red raspberries
1 quart vinegar
1 pound loaf sugar (or granulated)

Directions

Make the shrub

Combine 4 quarts of red raspberries with 1 quart of vinegar in a container.
Let the mixture stand for 4 days.
Strain the mixture to extract the juice.
For each pint of juice, add 1 pound of sugar.
Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Bottle and store

Bottle the shrub and store it in a cool, dry 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.

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.

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

Red raspberries: Provide the main fruit flavor and the juice that forms the base of the shrub.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the fruit flavor and helps preserve the mixture.
Sugar: Balances the acidity with sweetness and helps preserve the shrub.

“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.