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Strawberry and Raspberry Shrub

A sweet vinegar made from strawberries or raspberries, sugar, and white vinegar.

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 enough white vinegar over the berries to cover them.

  2. Let the berries stand for 48 hours.

  3. Drain the vinegar, squeezing the juice out of the fruit.

  4. If using strawberries, pour the vinegar over a second batch of strawberries for proper flavor.

Make the syrup

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

  2. In a porcelain-lined kettle, combine the liquid and sugar.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the mixture and store it in a cool place.

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

Strawberries or raspberries
Provide the fruit flavor and aroma that the vinegar draws out and carries into the liquid.
White vinegar
Extracts flavor from the fruit and gives the finished shrub its sharp, acidic bite.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's acidity with sweetness and helps preserve the finished mixture.

The step that matters

Boiling the sweetened liquid. Boiling for the stated 10 minutes dissolves the sugar fully and gives the mixture a stable, well-blended body before bottling. Undissolved sugar or a rushed boil can leave the syrup grainy or uneven.

“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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