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Another Way to Make Shrub

A shrub is a vinegar-based syrup made with lemon juice, Seville orange juice, sugar, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Another Way to Make Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the shrub

  1. Mix lemon juice, Seville orange juice, and loaf sugar well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a cask and add rum.

Age and bottle

  1. Shake the cask three times a day for two weeks or longer if the cask is large.

  2. Let it stand for one month or until clear enough to bottle.

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. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves into the juices to balance their sharpness.
Seville orange juice
Adds bitter-sharp citrus flavour and acidity that gives the shrub its character.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the sugar and orange flavour.
Rum
Acts as the spirit base that preserves the mixture and carries its flavours.

The step that matters

Shaking the cask during the rest. Regular shaking keeps the sugar mixing into the juice and rum so it dissolves evenly. Undissolved sugar can settle and leave the shrub uneven in sweetness and flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, rum. 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.

More shrub recipes

Raspberry 59Currant 39Cherry 10Brandy 6Rum 6Lemon 3 See all 8 →

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