Name: Shrub
Ingredients: 1 pint Seville orange juice (or ¾ pint ordinary oranges and ¼ pint lemons); 3 pints rum; 1 quart white sugar syrup

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Shrub

Ingredients

1 pint Seville orange juice (or ¾ pint ordinary oranges and ¼ pint lemons)
3 pints rum
1 quart white sugar syrup

Directions

Mix the Seville orange juice with the rum.
Strain the mixture.
Stir in the white sugar syrup.
Bottle the mixture.

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.

Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together801 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,908 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Rum + syruptop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together367 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Seville orange juice: Provides the sour citrus acidity and fruit aroma that give the shrub its character.
Rum: Extracts flavour from the juice and acts as a preservative, keeping the drink stable in the bottle.
White sugar syrup: Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the citrus and rum.