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Drink

Brandy Shrub

A sweet, citrus-based alcoholic condiment made by macerating fruit skins in sugar, then infusing with brandy and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Brandy Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the sugar on the skins of the lemons and oranges.

Combine and steep

  1. Put the sugar into a stone bottle with the strained juice of the fruits.

  2. Add the brandy and sherry.

  3. Once the sugar is melted, strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

  4. Bottle the strained 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.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from their juice and oil-rich skins.
Seville oranges
Provide bitter-sharp acidity and fragrant citrus oil from the skins.
White sugar
Sweetens the drink and draws oils from the rubbed citrus skins.
Brandy
Forms the spirit base and carries the citrus flavours.
Dark sherry
Adds depth and a nutty, rounded character to the spirit base.

The step that matters

Rubbing the sugar on the citrus skins. Rubbing sugar over the peel abrades the oil glands and lets the sugar absorb the fragrant citrus oils. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the shrub tasting flat and less aromatic.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, brandy, sherry. 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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