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Shrub, Whiskey
Boil four pounds of Demerara sugar to a clear syrup with a pint of water. Skim carefully, and let it get cold; then mix with it the strained juice of four pounds of lemons, one pound and a half of Seville oranges, half a pint of porter, and a gallon of whiskey. Put it into a jar, and shake it every day for a fortnight. Let it stand till clear, strain it off, and bottle for use. Time, a month to clear the shrub.
A spirit-based citrus cordial rather than the vinegar shrub familiar from modern bar menus. Nothing here is difficult, but the measures are imperial and the timeline is long.
- Imperial measuresCassell's is a British book: a pint is 20 fl oz (roughly 570 ml) and a gallon is 160 fl oz (about 4.55 litres), not the smaller US versions. Scaled to US volumes the whiskey alone is a little over 1.2 US gallons.
- YieldThe finished quantity is close to seven litres, or about nine 750 ml bottles. Quartering the recipe gives a manageable batch and still fills two bottles.
- Fruit by weightFour pounds of lemons is roughly twelve to sixteen fruit, yielding something like 600-750 ml of juice; a pound and a half of Seville oranges is perhaps three to five fruit. Weigh rather than count, since fruit size varies.
- Seville orangesBitter marmalade oranges, in season only for a few weeks in midwinter and sold as such. They are the point of the recipe, not a substitute for sweet oranges; if unavailable, the juice of a sweet orange sharpened with a little grapefruit or lemon juice is one suggested stand-in, though it is not the same drink.
- Demerara sugarRaw cane sugar with residual molasses, still sold under that name. Boiling four pounds with a pint of water gives a very heavy syrup; skim the foam as it rises and let it cool completely before it meets the spirit, as the recipe directs, since hot syrup will drive off some of the alcohol.
- The porterHalf a pint of dark beer. The recipe does not say why it is there, though the small quantity suggests colour and a malty note rather than a flavour meant to be tasted on its own; a modern porter or a mild stout will serve.
- The monthDaily shaking for a fortnight keeps the syrup and juice mixed while the flavours marry; the following weeks let the pulp settle. Strain through muslin rather than filtering under pressure, and do not rush it.
- KeepingAt this sugar and alcohol strength the shrub should keep well. Bottle full, cork tightly and store in the dark.
Shrub comes through English from the Arabic sharāb, simply a drink, and the word covers two related things: the vinegar-and-fruit syrup now revived in bars, and this older sort, a sweetened citrus cordial built on spirit. The spirit version is essentially punch made in advance and bottled, and it is often traced to the eighteenth-century coastal trade, when smugglers landed rum and brandy that householders turned into a keeping cordial with sugar and lemons. Rum shrub and brandy shrub appear more often than whiskey versions; a whiskey shrub of the kind Cassell's prints belongs to a period when Scotch and Irish whiskey were becoming more prominent in British drinking. The half-pint of porter is a domestic touch, and the month of settling shows how such a book expected a household to work: fruit bought in its short season, put down in a jar, and drunk long after.