Currant and Raspberry Shrub.
4 quarts ripe currants.
3 quarts red raspberries.
4 lbs. loaf sugar.
1 quart best brandy.
Pound the fruit in a stone jar, or wide-mouthed crock, with a wooden beetle. Squeeze out every drop of the juice; put this into a porcelain, enamel, or very clean bell-metal kettle, and boil hard ten minutes. Bring to the boil quickly, as slow heating and boiling has a tendency to darken all acid syrups. Put in the sugar at the end of the ten minutes, and boil up once to throw the scum to the top. Take it off; skim, let it get perfectly cold, skim off all remaining impurities, add the brandy and shake hard for five minutes. Bottle; seal the corks, and lay the bottles on their sides in dry sawdust.
Put up in this way, “shrub” will keep several years, and be the better for age. It is a refreshing and slightly medicinal drink, when mixed with iced water.