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Iced Strawberry Shrub
This shrub is one of the most delightful and refreshing drinks during warm weather and is made in this manner. Sprinkle over twenty pounds of ripe berries thirty cents' worth of tartaric acid; cover the berries with cold water, and let the whole stand for twenty-four hours; then strain. If a very rich shrub be desired, this juice should be poured over twenty pounds more of fresh berries and allowed to stand for from twelve to twenty-four hours; then strain again and add a pound of sugar for every pint of juice. Boil rapidly for five minutes, then simmer awhile, cool and bottle. For a pleasant and healthful beverage use one-third shrub to two-thirds water, and serve in glasses, with a lump of ice in each, and a straw though which to drink the shrub.
A cold-extraction fruit syrup scaled for a household putting up summer fruit by the bushel. The proportions are sound, but two things in the original will not translate: the acid measured by price, and the assumption that a corked bottle of syrup keeps in a cellar all summer.
- "Thirty cents' worth of tartaric acid"This is genuinely unrecoverable as a measurement; it depends on what the local druggist charged in the year the book was printed. Rather than guess, work by taste and structure: tartaric acid is powerful, and a small quantity per pound of fruit is enough to draw juice and set the tart edge. Add a little, let it stand, and adjust at the syrup stage.
- Tartaric acid itselfIt is still sold as a food-grade powder for baking and winemaking, and it is the same substance the book means. It does the work that vinegar does in many shrubs, giving acidity without vinegar's flavor. Cream of tartar is not a substitute.
- Scale it downTwenty pounds of berries, doubled to forty for the rich version, is a preserving-day quantity. Two pounds of strawberries with acid and cold water to cover, held twenty-four hours, gives a manageable batch; the volume of juice will depend on how much water it takes to cover the fruit.
- The double infusionThe second steeping over fresh berries is optional in the original, for a richer result, and it is worth doing. Use the strained juice cold over the new fruit; heating at this stage cooks the fresh top note out of it.
- StrainingDrip through a jelly bag or several layers of damp cheesecloth and resist squeezing. Pressed pulp clouds the finished shrub.
- Sugar and the boilA pound of sugar per pint of juice is about two cups of sugar to two cups of liquid, a very heavy syrup by modern taste and the reason the finished shrub is diluted two to one. Five minutes at a hard rolling boil is enough; skim the foam, and do not let the long "simmer awhile" reduce it to candy.
- StorageDo not treat this as a shelf-stable preserve. Fill clean bottles while hot, cool, and keep it in the refrigerator, where it will hold for several months; it also freezes well in small containers.
- Serving and yieldOne part shrub to two parts cold water, as directed, or to sparkling water. Yield will depend on how much water the fruit took up and how far the syrup is boiled down.
Shrub comes through English from the Arabic sharāb, a drink, and in Anglo-American kitchens it came to mean a sweetened fruit syrup sharpened with acid, kept in a bottle and let down with water or spirits as wanted. Many nineteenth-century versions used cider or wine vinegar; tartaric acid gave a comparable preserving tartness with a cleaner taste, and recipes calling for it appear in American books of the period. The instruction to serve it with a lump of ice and a straw dates the page as much as anything in it.