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Strawberry and Raspberry Shrub

A vinegar-based syrup made from strawberries and raspberries, sweetened with sugar, used to flavor drinks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strawberry and Raspberry Shrub

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the fruit

  1. Pour white vinegar over the berries to cover them.

  2. Let the berries stand for 48 hours.

  3. Drain the vinegar, squeezing the juice from the fruit.

  4. For strawberries, repeat with a second batch of fruit; raspberries only need one batch.

Make the syrup

  1. Measure the liquid and add 1 pound of sugar for every pint.

  2. Boil the mixture in a porcelain-lined kettle for 10 minutes.

  3. Bottle the syrup and store it in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Use 1 cup of syrup to flavor 1 quart of ice 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. 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

Berries
Provide the main fruit flavor and color, with their juice extracted by the vinegar.
White vinegar
Extracts juice from the fruit and adds the tart acidity that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve it for storage.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 10 minutes. Boiling the sugar and vinegar-fruit liquid dissolves the sugar fully and gives the syrup a stable, well-cooked base for bottling and storage.

“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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