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Orange Shrub

A chilled fruit syrup made from orange and lemon juice, grapes, pineapple, cherries, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Orange Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Juice the oranges and lemons.

  2. Finely chop the seeded grapes and pineapple.

Make the shrub

  1. In a large container, combine the orange juice, lemon juice, chopped grapes, chopped pineapple, and Maraschino cherries.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the water and add it to the fruit mixture.

  3. Stir well and serve very cold.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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 balances the sharp citrus acidity.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavor and liquid base of the drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the drink.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, grape, 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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