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Drink

Bbaudy Shrub

A sweetened citrus shrub made with lemons, Seville oranges, sugar, brandy, and dark sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Bbaudy Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Rub the sugar onto the skins of the lemons and oranges.

  2. Put the sugared fruits into a stone bottle with the strained juice.

Steep and bottle

  1. Add the brandy and sherry.

  2. Once the sugar is melted, strain the mixture through a jelly bag and bottle it.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the drink and draws oils and juice from the rubbed peel.
Seville oranges
Provide sharp acidity and bitter aromatic oils from the peel.
Lemons
Add bright acidity and fresh citrus aroma.
Brandy
Forms the alcoholic base, carrying the citrus aroma and flavour.
Dark sherry
Adds depth, nutty richness and a darker colour.

The step that matters

Wait until the sugar has fully melted before straining. Sugar dissolves slowly in alcohol and juice. Bottling early leaves undissolved grains and uneven sweetness, so the sugar must fully dissolve first.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, brandy, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, brandy, sherry. 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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