Fruit Shrub

Another little treasure from long ago that I found is called a fruit shrub or drinking vinegars. Like the switchel, there is a lot of wiggle room and experimentation in a fruit shrub. The word "shrub" actually comes from the Arabic term "sharbah" which means "drink". We also get "sherbet" and "syrup" from the same word. There's a long of history on vinegar drinks which is completely fascinating. I always wondered how the colonial folk dealt with just water, beer and wine for common drinks! By long history, I mean really long! Like way back in Babylonia, folks were putting date vinegar in their water to make it safe and the Romans mixed vinegar and water into a drink called "posca". The Colonial sailors would take shrubs with them to prevent scurvy. Since it was made from real fruit, it was high in vitamin C. Shrubs gained quite a bit of popularity during the Temperance movement. They had to have something to drink! Alcohol was gone!!

I haven't tried making a shrub yet considering I really JUST found out about them, but if you would like to, then here is the link that I found. I'm sure there is more if you Google.

www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-a-fruit-shrub-syrup-174072

From reading the article, fruit shrubs are more like a flavoring syrup than an actual drink which means there are about a million different uses. The one use that really interests me is using a shrub to naturally flavor water or sparkling water. There are so many of those little containers of water flavoring, but they all have artificial sweeteners in them which are bad news.

If you try out this recipe, then let me know how it came out!!