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Drink

Shrub or Essence of Punch

A sweet syrup made from almonds, orange flower water, rose water, and clarified sugar, used as a punch base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Shrub or Essence of Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond base

  1. Pound the almonds very fine in a marble mortar with the orange flower water.

  2. Mix the almond paste with the rose water and spring water, then strain through a fine cloth until dry.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. Boil the clarified sugar or water until it cracks when dipped in cold water.

  2. Add the almond mixture to the boiling sugar and boil for one minute.

  3. Let it cool, then bottle and cork tightly.

  4. Use 1 tablespoon per tumbler of water.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Orange + rosetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together876 recipes

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

  3. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sherry + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Jordan almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and body of the shrub base.
Bitter almonds
Add a concentrated almond aroma that rounds out the sweeter nuts.
Orange flower water
Adds a floral citrus aroma to the pounded almond paste.
Rose water
Adds a delicate floral aroma to the strained almond liquid.
Clarified sugar or water
Sweetens the mixture and, once boiled, forms the syrup that carries the flavours.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar until it cracks in cold water. Sugar boiled to the hard-crack stage sets firm when cooled, so the syrup must be cooked to that point to keep the shrub stable. Boiling the almond mixture only one minute keeps its aromas from breaking down.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, almond, rose, 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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