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Drink

Shrub of Nectar

A concentrated fruit syrup made with crushed fruit, vinegar, water, citrus, pineapple, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and pineapple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,664 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Shrub of Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crush the fruit or berries and place them in a large container.

  2. Pour enough cider vinegar over the fruit to cover it.

Mix and sweeten

  1. Add 1 quart of boiling water and the juice of 4 oranges.

  2. Grate the pineapple and add it to the mixture.

  3. Sweeten with sugar to taste.

Cook and store

  1. Boil the mixture, then strain it.

  2. Seal the shrub as you would for grape wine.

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. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Cider + pineappletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Vinegar + pineappletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. 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

Fruit or berries
Supplies the main fruit flavour and aroma of the syrup.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and helps preserve the fruit.
Orange juice
Adds bright citrus acidity and aroma.
Pineapple
Adds tropical fruit flavour along with some sweetness and acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, pineapple, sugar):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, pineapple, sugar. 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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