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Currant Shrub
Strain currant juice and allow a pound of sugar for each pint of juice. Boil five minutes, then stir till cool. Bottle when cold. Old-fashioned proportion is one tablespoon to each glass of water. Another shrub calls for a wineglass of brandy to each pint of syrup.
A simple fruit syrup rather than a vinegar shrub, and the ratios are the whole recipe. The points below cover the measures, the short boil, and how long the bottled syrup will actually keep.
- The proportion in modern termsA pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups granulated; a pint of juice is 2 cups. That is roughly equal volumes of sugar and juice, which puts the finished syrup near the concentration of a commercial cordial.
- Getting the juiceRed currants give up their juice readily once heated and crushed, then strained through a jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth. Two pounds of fruit yields somewhere near a pint of juice. Do not press or wring the bag if you want a clear syrup.
- Five minutes means five minutesA longer boil drives the syrup toward jelly, since currants are high in pectin and acid. The short boil is only to dissolve the sugar fully and knock back the microbial load, not to reduce the liquid.
- Why stir till coolThe recipe simply says to stir until cool. Even cooling and keeping the dissolved sugar distributed is the likely purpose; at this concentration the syrup is not saturated enough for crystals to be inevitable.
- A wineglass of brandyIn household books of this period a wineglass is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, or 1/4 cup. Added to a pint of syrup it is chiefly a flavouring; at that dilution it adds little keeping power and does not make the bottle shelf-stable.
- Bottling and keeping"Bottle when cold" was written for a cool cellar and a household that drank the syrup within the season. There is no processing step here, so treat it as a refrigerator syrup: clean bottles, cold storage, a few months at most, and discard at any sign of fermentation or mould.
- Serving strengthOne tablespoon to a tumbler of water is a thin, tart drink by current tastes. Two tablespoons to 8 ounces of cold or sparkling water is closer to what most people expect, and the syrup is equally at home over ice with soda and a squeeze of lemon.
- YieldA pint of juice with its sugar gives roughly a pint and a half of syrup, or about 48 tablespoons -- some four dozen glasses at the old-fashioned proportion.
The word shrub comes through English from the Arabic sharāb, simply "a drink." The name was applied to more than one thing: a fruit syrup cut with vinegar, and a fruit-and-spirit cordial of the kind the second variation here describes, the spirit version being the older English sense and the vinegar version more familiar from later American household books. Both carried the flavour of a short summer fruit season through the rest of the year, and a spoonful of syrup in cold water could stand in for something stronger. Red currants were a standard kitchen-garden fruit in Britain and the northern United States when this book was written -- abundant, sharply acidic, and too tart for most tastes out of hand, which made them natural candidates for jelly, syrup and shrub. American currant growing later contracted sharply after federal and state bans aimed at white pine blister rust, a disease that uses Ribes species as an alternate host, which is much of the reason the fruit is less familiar to cooks now than it was to the readers of this page.