Brandy Shrub with Lemon and White Wine
Reader ratingsBrandy steeped three days with lemon juice, lemon peel and nutmeg, then mixed with white wine and sugar and strained twice: the English shrub of 1739, at about 24% ABV.
- Recipe makes
- About 1 liter, 20 small glasses of 50 ml
- Prep
- Total
Includes three days for the brandy to steep with the lemon and nutmeg.
Brandy shrub in a small cordial glass, with its corked bottle and half a lemon.
The story behind the recipe
Shrub, in England in 1739, meant brandy steeped with lemon and nutmeg, then sweetened and lengthened with white wine and strained into bottles. Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife sets it down in a few lines and sums it up: “it is a pretty wine, and a cordial.”
The other shrub
Samuel Johnson’s 1755 definition of the drink, “Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed,” fits it exactly: a bottle of strong, sweet, lemony spirit kept in the house. The American shrub of the 1830s, fruit steeped in vinegar and stirred into iced water, borrowed the name and left the brandy out. How the one word came to cover both is told in Shrub: One Name, Two Very Different Drinks.
The wine and sugar wait three days, until the brandy has drawn the lemon and nutmeg. A cordial in her day was a sweet, strong drink taken in small glasses, and that is how to serve it.
The recipe lasted. William Kitchiner’s The Cook’s Oracle (1822) treated brandy or rum flavored with lemon syrup as an essence of punch, needing only water, and Jerry Thomas’s bar book of 1862 printed a brandy shrub much like this one.
Read more about this recipe
Strength and serving
This version is a quarter of Smith’s batch. Her quart, before 1824, was the wine quart of 946 ml, the same as the American quart today, so her two quarts of brandy become 475 ml here. With a brandy of 40% ABV and a 12% dry white wine, by our arithmetic the shrub comes out at about 24% ABV, the strength of a liqueur and a little more than half as strong as the brandy. A 50 ml glass holds about 12 ml of alcohol, a little more than a single 25 ml measure of spirit.
Sip it in a small glass, or lengthen it with three parts cold water to one of shrub, which brings it to about 6% ABV, near the strength of a strong beer. The water is our choice, after Kitchiner’s idea of shrub as punch in waiting. Brandy and lemon met again in the 1920s in the Sidecar. For a shrub with no alcohol at all, make the Raspberry Shrub Made with Vinegar.
TAKE two quarts of brandy, and put it in a large bottle, and put into it the juice of five lemons, the peels of two, half a nutmeg, stop it up, and let it stand three days, and add to it three pints of white wine, a pound and half of sugar; mix it, and strain it twice thro’ a flannel, and bottle it up: it is a pretty wine, and a cordial.
Recipe makes: About 1 liter, 20 small glasses of 50 ml
Ingredients
For About 1 liter, 20 small glasses of 50 ml. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 1 liter, 20 small glasses of 50 ml.
- Brandy, 40% ABV475 ml
- Lemon juice (about 1 1/4 lemons)50 ml
- Thin peel of 1/2 lemon, without the white pith
- Nutmeg, cracked1/8
- Dry white wine355 ml
- Sugar170 g
- Cold water, to serve (optional)
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 475 ml brandy, 40% ABV
- 50 ml lemon juice (about 1 1/4 lemons)
- thin peel of 1/2 lemon, without the white pith
- 1/8 whole nutmeg, cracked
- 355 ml dry white wine
- 170 g sugar
- cold water, to serve (optional)
Equipment
Vegetable peeler
Citrus juicer
Glass jar with a lid, about 1 liter
Wooden spoon
Sieve and paper coffee filter
Clean glass bottle
Tumbler
Instructions
Pare the peel from half a lemon in thin strips with a vegetable peeler, leaving the white pith behind, then squeeze the lemon juice.
Put the brandy, lemon juice, thin lemon peel and cracked nutmeg in a glass jar, close it and leave it at room temperature for 3 days.
Add the dry white wine and sugar and stir until the sugar has completely dissolved.
Strain through a sieve lined with a paper coffee filter, then strain a second time through a fresh filter, so the shrub is clear.
Pour into a clean glass bottle and close it.
Serve in small glasses, or stir a small glass of it into three times as much cold water in a tumbler.
Nutrition
105calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 1 liter, 20 small glasses of 50 ml
- Servings
- 20
Roughly estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for brandy, dry white wine, granulated sugar and lemon juice, for a 50 ml glass; water adds nothing.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is a quarter of the 1739 batch; multiply every amount by four for Smith’s full recipe. The strength stays about the same at any size.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
This shrub contains alcohol: about 24% ABV neat, by our arithmetic, assuming a 40% brandy and a 12% wine. It is not for children or anyone avoiding alcohol.
Smith gives no strength for her brandy; a modern 40% is assumed. Her three pints of white wine are 1,419 ml and her pound and a half of sugar 680 g; a quarter of each is 355 ml and 170 g. The paper filter does the job of her flannel.
Superior Lemon Squash is the alcohol-free cousin: a bottled lemon cordial of 1903, boiled with sugar and poured over soda water.
Storage
Keep the bottled shrub closed in the fridge and drink it within about 3 months, our cautious limit, as no tested keeping time exists for it. Throw it away if it turns fizzy, cloudy or moldy.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
E. Smith, The Compleat Housewife, 9th ed. (London, 1739), “To make Shrub”, p. 217
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Shrubs, Syrups & Cordials
- Region
- British
- Era
- 18th century
- Difficulty
- Easy