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Raspberry Shrub
Pour one quart cider vinegar over two quarts red raspberries in a jar or crock and let stand three days, when mash and strain, and to each pint of juice add one pound sugar. Boil twenty minutes, skimming well. Bottle when cold. RASPBERRY VINEGAR OR SHRUB (Without Sugar) Pour a quart of wine vinegar over three quarts of berries and let stand two days. Press out juice; pour over fresh berries and repeat twice. Last time bottle (without sugar).
A shrub is a vinegar-and-fruit syrup meant to be diluted, not drunk straight. Both versions here are essentially cold infusions finished in different ways, and the second is far more perishable than the first.
- What it is forOne to two tablespoons of the syrup in a tall glass of cold or sparkling water. The first version, boiled with sugar, is the drinking syrup; treat the second as a fruit vinegar for dressings and pan sauces.
- Cider vinegar strengthUse a standard 5 percent acidity cider vinegar. Some artisan vinegars are weaker, and acidity is what keeps the fruit safe during the three-day steep. "Wine vinegar" in the second version means red or white wine vinegar, again at 5 percent.
- The steepA glass or glazed crock only, never bare metal or aluminium, since the vinegar will pick up a metallic taste. Cover with a cloth or loose lid and keep it somewhere cool rather than a warm kitchen; a warm three-day steep is more likely to cloud or turn.
- Sugar ratioOne pound of sugar to one pint of juice is roughly 2 1/4 cups sugar per 2 cups juice, which is what makes the finished syrup keep. Do not reduce it if you intend to store the first version at room temperature.
- Boiling and skimmingTwenty minutes at a steady simmer is longer than needed to dissolve sugar; the point is to thicken slightly and drive off some water. Skim the pink foam as it rises or the bottled syrup will look muddy.
- StrainingMash, then strain through a jelly bag or two layers of damp cheesecloth and resist squeezing hard. Pressed pulp gives more volume but a cloudy, seedy syrup.
- Bottling"Bottle when cold" is not canning. Use clean bottles with tight caps and refrigerate; the sugared syrup will hold several months chilled, the unsweetened one a few weeks at most, and it should be discarded if it smells yeasty or grows a film.
- The second versionReusing the same vinegar over successive lots of fresh berries is what builds flavour without sugar. The instruction to 'pour over fresh berries and repeat twice' reads as at least three lots of berries in all, so on the order of nine quarts of fruit for one quart of vinegar. Plan the fruit before you start.
Shrub's name is conventionally traced to the Arabic sharāb, a drink or beverage, and it reached English kitchens by two routes: the rum-and-citrus punch shrub of the eighteenth century, and this vinegar-based fruit syrup, which was a working household preserve rather than a bar item. Before refrigeration, acid and sugar were the two reliable ways to hold a summer fruit crop, and vinegar had the advantage of being cheap and always to hand. Raspberry vinegar in particular was a fixture of nineteenth-century American and British domestic manuals, and it was often recommended as a cooling drink for the sick. That both a sweetened and an unsweetened version are offered reflects the period's habit of listing a preserve for the pantry alongside a plainer form for the kitchen.