Raspberry Shrub

1. Rinse and drain the raspberries. Place in a large bowl.
2. Sprinkle the sugar over the raspberries and toss together. Cover tightly and let berries macerate for 4 hours or overnight.
3. Line a colander or sieve with a few layers of cheesecloth and place over another bowl. Pour the berry mixture into the colander and strain out the solids. Gently press the fruit mixture to squeeze out as much juice as possible.
4. Mix the vinegar into the juice. Pour into a glass bottle or jar, seal it and store in the fridge. This mixture should keep for several months in the fridge. You can save the fruit pulp and add it to yogurt or muffins.

Shrubs are also called drinking vinegar. Back in the day, there were no refrigerators to help preserve fresh fruit for longer than a day or two. Adding the sugar draws out the fruit juices via osmosis. Traditionally, the mixture would be left to ferment into alcohol, then vinegar. Adding vinegar to the fruit syrup is a much quicker and easier way to produce the same thing. Store the shrub in the fridge indefinitely. After a few weeks, you’ll find that the flavour of the shrub changes, as the remaining sugar ferments with natural yeasts and turns into alcohol, which in turn ferments into vinegar. Since the advent of refrigeration, shrubs have all but disappeared.