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Currant Shrub
Two ounces red currant juice, 1 ounce powdered sugar, 2 dashes brandy, ½ glass shaved ice. Shake, fill with plain soda. Straws.
A single fountain drink, built in the glass and stretched with soda water. The proportions are workable as written once you know what the measures meant behind a counter.
- MeasuresThe 2 oz of currant juice is a fluid measure. The ounce of sugar may be weight or volume; taken as volume it is about 2 tablespoons. A dash was never standardised — in period bar and fountain use it ranged from a few drops to roughly an eighth of a fluid ounce — so two dashes of brandy is flavouring, not a drink.
- The glassFountain soda glasses of the period varied in size, so "half a glass" of shaved ice is proportional rather than fixed; in a common glass it would be a few ounces of ice. Shaved, not cubed: it chills fast and dilutes into the drink, which is part of the intended texture.
- Powdered sugarIn fountain usage this meant finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-laced confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine sugar dissolves cleanly; better still, substitute an equal volume of 1:1 simple syrup and shorten the shaking.
- Currant juiceRed currant juice here is unsweetened pressed juice, tart and high in pectin. Bottled red currant nectar is usually pre-sweetened — if you use it, cut the sugar sharply or the drink turns cloying.
- Plain sodaCharged water from the fountain. Pour it down the side of the glass in one steady stream rather than in stages.
- Order of operationsShake the juice, sugar, brandy and ice together first, then top with soda in the serving glass. Adding soda to a shaker is how you lose the carbonation and, occasionally, the lid.
- YieldOne glass; the recipe does not state a finished volume. Serve immediately with straws, as shaved ice and soda both fade quickly.
The word shrub comes through English from the Arabic sharāb, a drink, and by the nineteenth century it covered two related things: the old vinegar-and-fruit syrup kept in the pantry, and a sweetened fruit juice cut with spirit and served cold. This one belongs to the second family, and the plain soda and straws point to the drugstore soda fountain, where a druggist mixed fruit syrups, acid phosphates and charged water to order. Red currants were a common American dooryard fruit, sour enough to hold up against sugar and soda water in a way that sweeter berries do not. The two dashes of brandy suggest that some fountains before Prohibition kept spirits on hand as flavouring agents.