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Whiskey Shrub
Boil five pounds of moist sugar to a syrup with a pint of water. Add the strained juice of four pounds of lemons and one pound of Seville oranges. Stir the liquor, and when it is quite cold add half a pint of porter and a gallon of pine whiskey. Pour the mixture into a jar, cork closely, and shake it each day for seven days. Put it in a cool closet, and leave it for five weeks; then bottle, and store for use.
A Victorian sweetened whiskey cordial, closer to a bottled punch than to the vinegar-based shrubs now sold as mixers. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities are enormous and two of the ingredients need translating.
- Scale it downAs written this makes something over a gallon and a half of finished liquor, on the order of nine or ten 750 ml bottles. Quartering the recipe (1 lb 4 oz sugar, 1/4 pint water, 1 lb lemons, 4 oz Seville oranges, 1/8 pint porter, 1 quart whiskey) gives a manageable batch.
- Moist sugarMoist sugar is unrefined or partly refined cane sugar, damp and pale brown. Light brown sugar is the closest modern equivalent; granulated white will work but gives a thinner, less molasses-scented result.
- "Pine whiskey"This term is genuinely obscure. It may be a compositor's error for "fine whiskey", and "pine" appears elsewhere as shorthand for pineapple-flavoured spirit; neither reading can be confirmed. Use a straightforward blended or grain whiskey at 40% ABV rather than anything heavily peated, which will fight the citrus.
- PorterHalf a pint of porter is there for colour, body and a faint bitterness, not for fermentation. A modern London porter or a dry stout does the job; the small amount will not spoil the keeping qualities, since the finished liquor sits at roughly 25% alcohol.
- The syrupBoil only long enough to dissolve the sugar fully and drive off a little water — a minute or two at a rolling boil. Taken much further, the syrup may crystallise in the bottle weeks later.
- Let it cool completelyThe instruction to add the spirit only when the liquor is "quite cold" is the hinge of the recipe. Warm syrup drives off both the whiskey's aromatics and the volatile oils in the citrus juice.
- Citrus by weightFour pounds of lemons is roughly 12 to 16 fruit, giving about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of juice; a pound of Seville oranges is 3 or 4. Sevilles are sour and available only in midwinter — substitute two parts sweet orange juice to one part extra lemon if you cannot get them.
- Vessels and strainingUse glass or food-grade plastic, never metal, for the five-week rest. Strain through damp muslin or a coffee filter before bottling; citrus juice throws a heavy sediment that never quite settles clear.
- ServingFar too sweet and strong to drink neat by the glass. Serve in small measures over ice, or lengthen with soda water or hot water as a toddy. At this sugar and alcohol level it should keep well.
The word shrub comes through English from the Arabic sharāb, meaning simply a drink, and by the eighteenth century it named a sweetened citrus-and-spirit cordial made at home in large jars. Rum shrub was the famous version, often said to belong to the smuggling coasts of Devon and Cornwall, where cheap spirits and imported lemons met in the same cellars, though the association is folk tradition rather than documented fact; brandy and whiskey versions followed as those spirits became household staples. Cassell's appears to place it among the drinks alongside punches, cups and homemade wines, in a period when a five-week maturation in a cool closet was an ordinary use of domestic space. The heavy sugar and the high proportion of spirit are preservative as much as decorative: made in this quantity, a shrub was laid down for the year, not for the week.