Forgotten Drink
Etching of a cluttered dining room: a young man stands carving at a round table, an older man sits to the left, a young woman with ringlets sits to the right, and a small dog walks across the tablecloth among plates, glasses and a jug.
“Our Housekeeping”, Phiz’s etching for Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850), the chapter in which a servant runs up a public-house account for “quartern rum shrub”.

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Shrub and Cordial Recipes From History

Fruit Vinegars, Syrups and Old Liqueurs

Old shrub, syrup and cordial recipes from period books: raspberry shrub with vinegar, the 1739 brandy shrub, capillaire, orgeat, lemon squash and Warsaw syrups.

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On this page
  1. 65Columella’s quinces kept in honey
  2. 1669An Amsterdam book boils currant syrup for cold water
  3. 1739Eliza Smith’s brandy shrub
  4. 1755Johnson: “Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed”
  5. 1839Vinegar shrub in a Kentucky cookbook
  6. 1885Warsaw raspberry syrups and liqueurs
The years on this page
  1. 65 Columella’s quinces kept in honey
  2. 1669 An Amsterdam book boils currant syrup for cold water
  3. 1739 Eliza Smith’s brandy shrub
  4. 1755 Johnson: “Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed”
  5. 1839 Vinegar shrub in a Kentucky cookbook
  6. 1885 Warsaw raspberry syrups and liqueurs

What is a shrub drink?

Two different drinks that share a name. The older shrub was English, printed by 1739: brandy or rum with citrus juice and sugar, sipped as a cordial or kept as a ready-made base for punch. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 defined it in five words: “Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed.” The other was American: ripe fruit steeped in vinegar and sweetened into a sharp syrup for iced water. A Kentucky cookbook called the vinegar kind shrub in 1839, and from the 1840s temperance cookbooks listed fruit vinegars among the drinks a teetotal household could pour.

Both were made to keep, and that is what ties this page together. Before refrigerators, a household caught the fruit of the season in sugar, vinegar or spirit, bottled it and stirred a spoonful into water for months afterward. An Amsterdam book of 1669 boiled red currant juice into a syrup for cold water. Meg Dods in Edinburgh called capillaire, a syrup scented with orange-flower water, “a pleasant summer-draught” in 1829, and William Kitchiner bottled an instant lemon syrup so that lemonade took a minute. A Warsaw household book of 1885 has raspberry and cranberry syrups for water or hot tea beside the raspberry and rose liqueurs made with vodka.

The idea is far older than any of them. Romans boiled grape juice down into defrutum, kept quinces in honey and boiled honey with vinegar into oxymel, all to be let down with water. Vinegar and water as a drink goes back to the Roman soldier’s posca, though no source links it to the American shrub.

Most of the drinks here are alcohol-free, and the liqueurs and the brandy shrub are marked. Each recipe names its book.

Each recipe names the period book it comes from and says what we changed. How we research

Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed.

Samuel Johnson’s definition of shrub, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

How do you make a vinegar shrub?

Steep ripe fruit in vinegar, strain it, boil it with sugar and bottle it. Lettice Bryan’s 1839 raspberry shrub steeps the berries twice in cider vinegar; an 1887 temperance cookbook leaves them a week and takes two tablespoons of the syrup to a tumbler of iced water.

The storyShrub: One Name, Two Very Different Drinks

What was a cordial in the past?

A sweet drink kept by the bottle, with or without spirit. Eliza Smith called her brandy shrub “a pretty wine, and a cordial”; Edward Spencer’s lemon squash of 1903 is a lemon syrup sharpened with citric acid for soda water, the kind of cordial still sold by the bottle in Britain.

The storyAlcohol-Free Drinks Through History

Which syrups were stirred into water?

Fruit, flower and almond syrups, centuries before soda. Romans let down grape syrup and quince honey with water; an Amsterdam book of 1669 did the same with red currant syrup; and a 1920 drinks book boiled almond milk with sugar and orange-flower water into orgeat syrup.

The storyWhat Did Romans Drink Besides Wine?

What did Polish households make with fruit and vodka?

Both syrups and liqueurs. Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa’s Warsaw book of 1885 warms raspberries into a syrup for water or tea and makes cranberry syrup for tea, and steeps raspberries and roses in spirit for liqueurs sweetened with a thick syrup.

The storyHow Poland Made Vodka

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16 recipes in Shrub and Cordial Recipes From History

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