Currant Shrub, an 1845 Syrup for Iced Water
Reader ratingsRed currant juice boiled five minutes with its weight in sugar and stirred as it cools: a family shrub dated 1845 and printed in 1920, a teaspoon to a glass of iced water.
- Recipe makes
- About 720 ml syrup, enough for many glasses
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Includes about 1 hour for the syrup to cool, stirred now and then, before it is bottled.
Currant shrub stirred into iced water, with the syrup in a corked bottle and fresh red currants.
The story behind the recipe
This currant shrub has no vinegar and no brandy in it. It is red currant juice boiled for five minutes with its own weight in sugar, stirred until cool and bottled, and Bertha Stockbridge printed it in 1920 under the heading “CURRANT SHRUB (date of recipe, 1845).” Her serving is spare: “Use a teaspoonful of this syrup to a glass of iced water.”
A family recipe in a dry decade
Stockbridge’s What to Drink came out in New York in the first year of national Prohibition, a whole book of drinks without alcohol. Her chapter on fruit vinegars, shrubs and waters opens with her own family papers, where she found recipes for vinegars and shrubs going back to 1845, and this is one of them. The date is hers; we have only her word for it. Many shrubs were sharpened with vinegar or kept with spirits, as the raspberry shrub made with vinegar is. This one is simply a quick syrup, closer to the Dutch currant syrup of 1669, though that book boils three parts of juice with two of sugar to a thin syrup, where Stockbridge takes a pound of sugar to every pint and boils for just five minutes.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
A kilo of red currants gives about 480 ml of juice. A pound of sugar to a US pint is about 450 g to 480 ml, roughly equal weights, which makes a thick, very sweet syrup. Her teaspoon to a glass gives only a faint pink drink; a tablespoon or two is more like what most people expect now, and that is our suggestion, not hers. The book gives no word on taste or color.
Where the shrub came from, and how vinegar and rum got into it, is in What Was a Shrub?
Recipe makes: About 720 ml syrup, enough for many glasses
Ingredients
For About 720 ml syrup, enough for many glasses. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 720 ml syrup, enough for many glasses.
- Red currants1 kg
- Sugar450 g
- Iced water, to serve
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 1 kg red currants
- 450 g sugar
- iced water, to serve
Equipment
Potato masher
Sieve lined with muslin or cheesecloth
Medium saucepan
Wooden spoon
Clean glass bottle or jar
Instructions
Crush the red currants in a bowl with a potato masher, then strain them through a sieve lined with muslin or cheesecloth, squeezing the cloth to get out as much juice as you can.
Measure the juice into a medium saucepan and add the sugar, adjusting it to match the weight of the juice if you have more or less.
Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves, and boil for 5 minutes.
Take the pan off the heat and keep stirring now and then as the syrup cools, about 1 hour.
Pour the cooled syrup into a clean glass bottle or jar, close it and keep it in the fridge.
To serve, stir a spoonful or two of the syrup into a glass of iced water.
Nutrition
40calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 720 ml syrup, enough for many glasses
- Servings
- 24
Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for red currant juice and granulated sugar, for one glass made with 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of syrup.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Keep the sugar equal in weight to the juice: about 450 g of sugar to each 480 ml of juice.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
The book’s recipe is paraphrased here, not reprinted: two quarts of currants are crushed and pressed through a bag, a pound of granulated sugar goes to each pint of juice, and the syrup is boiled five minutes, stirred “constantly while cooling,” bottled and sealed. The 1 kg of currants is our measure for her two quarts.
Keep the bottle in the fridge and use it within a month. The book seals its bottles but says nothing about how long they keep.
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
Bertha E. L. Stockbridge, What to Drink: The Blue Book of Beverages (New York and London: D. Appleton, 1920), “Currant Shrub (date of recipe, 1845)”, pp. 64–65
Recipe details
- Drink
- Alcohol-free
- Drink family
- Shrubs, Syrups & Cordials
- Region
- American
- Era
- 19th century
- Base
- Fruit & juice
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Season
- Summer