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Shrub, Brandy
Cut off in thin strips the rind of a large fresh lemon, and put these in a bottle, with the strained juice of two lemons and two pints of best brandy. Cork the bottle closely, and let the liqueur stand in a cool place for four days. Strain it, and mix with it one pint and a half of sherry or Marsala, three-quarters of a pound of clarified loaf sugar, and as much grated nutmeg as will stand on a threepenny piece. Filter the preparation, and it will be ready for use. Very good milk punch may be made of the dregs which remain after the shrub is poured off. To make it, pour upon the dregs three times the quantity of warm but not boiling milk. Stir the preparation briskly for a few minutes, then leave it in a cool place for three days. Pour off the clear liquor, and strain the thick part through a tamis. Time, four days. Sufficient for half a gallon of shrub.
A bottled punch base rather than a drink to be mixed to order: brandy is infused with lemon, then lengthened with fortified wine and sugar syrup. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities and vessels need translating.
- Scale and yieldTwo pints brandy plus a pint and a half of sherry and three-quarters of a pound of sugar syrup gives the stated half gallon (about 2.3 litres imperial) of finished shrub. Cassell's pints are imperial, so 20 fl oz each; using US pints will shift the proportions slightly but not damagingly.
- Clarified loaf sugarLoaf sugar was hard refined sugar broken from a cone, and "clarified" means dissolved in water and skimmed to a clear syrup. Ordinary granulated sugar dissolved in an equal weight of hot water needs no skimming and does the same job.
- The threepenny pieceA silver threepence was about 16 mm across, so the nutmeg called for is a generous pinch / a light grating rather than a measured amount. Add half, taste after a day, and add more if it has not come forward.
- Lemon rindTake the rind in thin strips as directed, pared clear of the white pith, which turns bitter over a four-day steep. The oil in the peel is the point; the strained juice of two lemons supplies the acid.
- Cool placeFour days at cellar temperature, around 10-15C. A cupboard away from light works; the refrigerator slows the extraction of the peel oils but does no harm if you extend the time.
- FilteringAfter the fortified wine and syrup go in, the mixture will be cloudy from suspended oils. A coffee filter or several layers of muslin will clear it, slowly. Expect to lose a little volume in the paper.
- Marsala or sherryThe recipe specifies only 'sherry or Marsala'. An oloroso or amontillado sherry, or a dry to medium Marsala, will suit better than a cream sherry: sweet styles on top of the syrup will make the shrub cloying.
- The milk punch afterthoughtPouring warm milk over the lees curdles it, and the curds trap solids as they settle, leaving a clear spirituous liquid. Do this in the refrigerator rather than a Victorian larder: the dregs are diluted threefold and the alcohol left is low, so three days at room temperature is not a risk worth taking. A tamis is a fine woven straining cloth.
- KeepingSealed and cool, the finished shrub holds for months and improves for the first few weeks. Serve it cold in small glasses, or a measure topped with soda water.
"Shrub" comes from the Arabic sharab, a noun meaning "drink" — sharbat / sherbet is a parallel borrowing rather than an intermediate step — and it appears in English in the eighteenth century as a name for a sweetened citrus-and-spirit cordial. Brandy shrub and rum shrub were staples of the English household cellar through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, kept bottled and ready so that a glass could be poured or a punch built without fresh squeezing; the drink is bound up in tradition with smuggling on the south coast, where landed brandy and citrus met in the same kitchens, though that association is folk memory rather than documented fact. Its place in Cassell's, among the compounded liqueurs and homemade wines, reflects a period when a well-run house still made its own cordials as a matter of course, and the tail-end instruction for turning the lees into milk punch shows the same thrift: the clarifying trick of curdling milk into a spirit and straining it off, familiar from eighteenth-century recipes, wastes nothing that has already been paid for.