Catalan Horchata & the Evolution of the Flip -- a Pinedo recipe and more

Happy 2024!

This begins my 13th year of blogging.  I continue to be astonished that I was able to continue blogging for so long.  My experiences have been many and my education has been vast.  I've learned techniques and recipes from a variety of time periods and cultures.  It is fun to taste something completely different or a riff on something that is familiar.  Sometimes I review my early posts just to remind myself of what I have done, because this is my 289th post and some of them have faded in my memory.  

As of this writing, my blog has had over 144,000 page views from all over the world.  Mostly it averages around 1,000 page views a month, but occasionally I have months where the views are 2,000 or 5,000 and one month over 12,000.  I am pleased to share my writing with so many people.

For my "Happy New Year" 2024 post, I chose to explore Encarnación Pinedo's recipe for Catalan Horchata (page 123).

My Translation

My Redaction

Making the full recipe that uses a quart of brandy was too much for my guest taster and me, so I reduced the recipe to 1/4 her suggestions, thus making the amount I want.  : )

1 cup brandy

2 egg yolks

4 tablespoons brown sugar

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon orange flower water

2 ounces ground almonds

Put the brandy into a small saucepan.  Beat the yolks thoroughly.

Begin heating the brandy over a very low fire.  Slowly drizzle the beaten yolks into the brandy, beating vigorously with a fork the entire time.  The yolks cook and the mixture looks like egg drop soup, but because of the beating, the strands of yolk are very small and fine.  

Once all the yolks are in, add the brown sugar, cinnamon, orange flower water, and almonds.  Stir well.  

I let it sit without any heat for about 5 minutes to start infusing the almonds into the hot liquid.  But I noticed the brandy wasn't very hot at all, so I returned the pan to low heat to warm it, stirring often, until it started to simmer.  

I tasted it with the ground almonds in it and was not happy having to deal with them as part of the beverage.  So I strained them out.  

There was enough to make two servings of about 3 to 4 ounces each.

Yolks before beating

Beaten yolks

Pour a very thin stream of yolks slowly into the pan.

While beating continuously with a fork

The look with all the yolks incorporated.

And with everything mixed in.

The strained mixture to drink.

The Verdict

It was warm, sort of.  Straining out the almonds took time so the drink cooled in the process.  But oh, it was definitely warming!  

It had a good mouthfeel -- thicker than just brandy.  My guest taster said it had body.  The flavors were bold:  we could taste the cinnamon, the sweetness, the brandy, and (with contemplation) the almonds.  I think the orange flower water was there, but it didn't stand out.  That was acceptable.

It was creamy and had the brandy kick without being too strong.  An alcoholic dessert, really, in the same category with hot buttered rum.  We were both pleasantly relaxed after sipping our share.  A little goes a long way with this!

I think this is a good beverage to serve on a cold winter's night, on New Year's Eve, or at a gathering of good friends.  I recommend it to those who enjoy the stronger spirits.

Success!

But wait, there's more!  When I was translating Miss Pinedo's book, I did some reading about horchatas, which are not typically alcoholic beverages, and discovered that this recipe is more like an horchata-inspired version of an old beverage called a brandy flip, an ale flip, or a "Yard of Flannel." 

I needed to explore flip recipes to learn more about them.  Considering the amount of alcohol involved, I tried one recipe a day.

The earliest reference I found was about Thomas Jefferson (so late 1700s to early 1800s) and his "Yard of Flannel", found in The Early American Cookbook, page 36:

This recipe is given in more detail in William Kitchiner's The Cook's Oracle.  It's first edition was published in 1817 and went through at least seven editions through 1830.  

This was the recipe I tried next.  Again, I reduced the amounts to one-fourth.

1 cup ale

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/4 cup brandy

For a Yard of Flannel

The ale went into a saucepan and was heated.  The brandy, sugar, egg, and ginger went into another container where they were mixed vigorously with a fork until the egg was fully blended -- I couldn't see any white or yolk floating in the brandy.

It didn't take long for the ale to start boiling, although it was hard to tell if what I was seeing was boiling or just fizzing.  It was important to look for steam.  I put the ale into another container.  

I followed the usual technique for mixing a hot liquid into beaten eggs and not making scrambled eggs:  I put a little hot liquid into the eggs, swirled the mixture to warm the eggs, then poured in more hot liquid, swirling it to keep mixing.  That worked.  Once I had the two together, I kept pouring them back and forth between the containers until I thought they were "smooth."

You can see it was foamy.

The final result looked like this:

Does this look like flannel?

The Verdict

It was fruity, lightly spiced, lightly sweet, and had a thinner mouthfeel than the first recipe.  The ginger was not dominant.  My guest taster and I both liked it, although we disagreed on one aspect.  I felt it needed more sugar and he thought it was just right.  I wanted it to have a more syrupy mouthfeel (I was not aiming for sweeter, honest!).  Perhaps a second egg instead of more sugar would have accomplished that.

It wasn't very warm, so I warmed some of it again over the stove.  I noticed some small chunks of egg appeared, although the flavor didn't change and it didn't stay hot for long.  I don't think it was worth doing.

In comparing the two recipes, this one was my guest taster's preference.  It was not as strongly alcoholic and, I thought, not as robust in its presentation.  I liked both recipes, and I would choose between them based on the situation I was addressing or what I felt like having at the time.

We were curious about how the egg, sugar, spice, and brandy changed the flavor and look of the ale, so we taste-tested them to compare.

Flip on the left, ale on the right

You can see that the flip is darker, creamier, and foamy.  The ale itself was a little bitter but the flip was not at all.  We both preferred the flip over the ale.

Success again!

I found another version of the Yard of Flannel that allowed for no brandy (or rum) being added.  It was in Ziemann and Gillette's 1903 version of The White House Cookbook, on pages 446-7.

I thought it interesting that they suggested adding butter (which I think would improve the mouthfeel) and to serve it with dry toast.  I did not try this recipe, but I did put butter into another recipe (see below).

Something I had seen in a variety of sources suggested that originally the flip was heated with an iron rod (a "flip dog" or "loggerhead") that was heated in the fire, plunged into the mixture, and stirred until the beverage was hot and foaming.  From there, the technique changed to heating the ale on the fire and then pouring the liquids between two pitchers to mix.  The modern recipes for flips don't heat them at all -- they still use an egg but it is served cold.

An example is this entry from the Food Lover's Companion, on page 238.

I wanted to explore the idea of heating the flip with a hot iron.  I chose to repeat the second recipe for this but used 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg instead of ginger.  I mixed all the ingredients together, including the eggs, until they looked smooth.  

I used my hand-forged skewer and heated it to red-hot in my most convenient fire:  my stove top!

Not quite a fireplace, but it meets the need.

The challenge was to stir the liquid well despite there not being very much of it to work with.  

My first attempt was with Kitchiner's recipe, using nutmeg instead of ginger.  I mixed all the ingredients together in one pitcher, making sure the egg was well-incorporated.  The iron was red hot but when I plunged it into the liquid and the mixture hissed and steamed a little.  However, it did not heat the liquid much at all.  I reheated the iron and tried again, several times, but I did not get much of a change.

We tasted it -- it was much like what we had before but not hot and I didn't feel the egg was cooked.  So I heated it on the stove until it was steaming.  We both liked it with the nutmeg as much as we liked it with the ginger, so our choice was to pick the one we felt like having if we made it again.  

I still wanted more body to it, so after drinking about half of it, I added about 1/2 teaspoon of butter to each mug, stirring it well.  The butter definitely improved the body, and my guest taster thought it was fine.  I liked it but it was not what I wanted.  

It was then I realized I made a big mistake:  the ale was cold right out of the refrigerator, which made it a challenge for the iron to get it hot.  We decided to try again the next night, and I left the ale out to come to room temperature.

This time I used Kitchiner's recipe but modified with the inspiration of The Gentleman's Companion, page 52.  Notice the subtitle of this book, "Being an exotic drinking book or, Around the world with jigger, beaker, and flask."  This is funny!  Mr. Baker was quite serious about his drinking skills.

The inspiration was to mix the spices (I used 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon and ginger mixed together) and to use dried lemon zest, which Kitchiner also suggested.  I also increased the amount of sugar to 4 tablespoons.

Alas, starting with room temperature ale did not change the outcome of the experiment.  The liquid did not get hot, even after several attempts with a hot iron, so I heated it on the stove while stirring vigorously with a fork until it was very steaming hot.

We enjoyed it!  The lemon was too strong for me, but my guest taster thought it was fine.  I wanted some lemon, just less.  I particularly liked the cinnamon and ginger mix.  The mixture had more body (I was right about adding more sugar!) although none had as much as Pinedo's recipe.  Perhaps another egg or just a yolk would have done it.  

It wasn't too sweet, and it had a lovely flavor with just the right amount of alcoholic bite.  My guest taster thought that was his favorite mixture.  Mine was the Pinedo recipe because of the flavors and the mouthfeel, although I wished it had less alcohol in it.  Heating it longer could take care of that problem.

At this point we had tried flips five times in four days, and we were seriously done with drinking brandy and ale for a while.  Not that we regretted it!  It was just more drinking than we were used to.

Regarding heating with an iron:  I suspect that I needed to have more liquid and a thicker iron that could get very hot and stay that way for a while.  I can see why the heating and mixing process changed -- using a saucepan was much more reliable for heating, then mixing between two pitchers allowed the frothing that was so desired.  

Just to wrap up the survey of flips, I wanted to share a version from Lobscouse & Spotted Dog, page 114, which suggests using sherry instead of ale and does not suggest brandy at all.  We did not try this.

As an added bonus, I redid a recipe from this blog to keep from being wasteful...

I used the strained out almonds from the horchata recipe to make emeles, a fried medieval cookie.  I added the leftover egg whites and enough dried bread crumbs to make a dough that was reasonably thick and stuck to itself.  I heated oil and dropped in spoonfuls of dough, flattening each cookie, and frying it on both sides until golden brown.  As they drained on a paper towel, I sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar.  They look just like pork sausage patties!  But the brandy kick came through along with the cinnamon and almond flavors.  Click here for the original post on emeles.

Not sausage patties!

What a way to wrap up the old year and prepare for the new!  I wish you all a wonderful 2024 filled with good food and friends.

Cheers!

A Lemon Cordial Follow Up!

My most amazing, wonderful, awesome daughter read my previous post on the Lemon Cordial, made from an 18^th century recipe, that used milk in the process.  In doing so, she recalled an article from Cook’s Illustrated titled “The Key to Crystal-Clear Cocktails? Milk. (Really.)”  It was written by Camper English and published in December, 2016.

The article focused on an old technique to make a “milk punch”:

The base recipe for milk punch includes citrus juice or another acidic ingredient. Milk (usually hot milk) is added to the mixed cocktail, curdling the milk, and then the punch is strained to remove the curds. The process removes most of the color and cloudiness from the drink, clarifying it, and it preserves the cocktail from spoilage for months or even years if kept cool.

The recipe I followed required sliced lemons to be put in milk then heated until the mixture forms curds and whey.  This is strained, and the resulting liquid is mixed with sugar and brandy to form the cordial.  I expected large curds that were distinct from the whey (the recipe said to boil the milk until the whey was “very clear”) but I never saw that because the curds were all small.

I tried filtering out the curds through cheesecloth, but that didn’t work.  I decided to add the brandy and sugar while hoping the cordial would taste right.  The curds started settling out, and the whole appearance was not appealing.  It was then I decided to filter it using a cloth bag. 

The result was a very clear and delicately flavored cordial that tasted of brandy and lemon with a good mouthfeel from the sugar.  I noticed (but did not mention in the post) that the curds had taken on the color of the brandy, and that the cordial was lighter in color after it was filtered.

Mr. English continues with:

The concept of clarifying cocktails with milk might seem a bit odd today, but in the milk punch heyday—the 1700s through the mid-1800s—spirits would have been far rougher around the edges than those we enjoy today, and in addition to clarifying and preserving the drink, the process also softened the harsh flavor of the booze. The resulting drink is unctuous and silky, clear and only subtly milky, with softer, mellow flavors.

What a surprise!  In doing the wrong thing with the original recipe, I stumbled across an historical technique.

Mr. English also tells us:

The earliest known milk punch recipe, as reported by cocktail historian David Wondrich in his book Punch, dates to 1711, and is attributed to housewife Mary Rockett. That recipe calls for a gallon of brandy, five quarts of water, eight lemons, and two pounds of sugar. To it, two gallons of scalding hot “new milk” are added, and after an hour, it is strained through a flannel bag.

He goes on to report on the variations professional bartenders are exploring today:  heating the milk or not, trying a variety of milks (animal and nut), changing the order of the steps, and more.  We are also treated to the science underlying the process, to help us understand the importance of the curds in stripping out the tannins, for example.

The article is a great read and brought insight to me on the lemon cordial recipe.  I recommend reading it!

Now I wonder why the cordial recipe required straining the curds before adding the brandy.  I can understand adding the sugar after straining – otherwise it makes the liquid very thick and slows down the straining process.  If, as Mr. English notes, the brandy in the 1700s was “rougher around the edges than those we enjoy today”, it seems the cordial would taste better if the brandy also came into contact with the curds. 

But perhaps that wasn’t the goal.  Perhaps the goal was to infuse the whey with the lemon flavor, which happens faster than infusing the alcohol with the lemons.  Once it was mixed with the brandy and sugar, you had a nice beverage.

When I put the sliced lemons – pulp, white, seeds, and peel – into the milk, I wondered if the white would make it taste bitter.  Perhaps the curds removed the bitter, and that was another advantage of using milk. 

To say I was as pleased as punch to read this article is an understatement.

A Lemon Cordial - with milk

I was perusing a book in my collection that caught my attention (again) because it had nothing printed on the spine.  But it did have print on the front cover and that was A Book of Cookery.  It is an intriguing book because the author, Kimberly K. Walters, does historical reenactment, and she compiled these recipes from a variety of historical sources to aid her reenactment work.

ISBN 978-0-692-26980-0

Her focus is the 18th century, the American Revolutionary War, and George Washington, but she notes in the "Forword" that she sometimes took from sources just before and after that time when she felt it was appropriate.  

The book contains more than just recipes, which she properly calls "receipts."  It also offers information on how to choose good food items, lists of what items are in season "in the colonies", a detailed description of how and what to serve for dinner courses ("removes"), how the table is to be set, and descriptions of cooking equipment.

As someone who has experience in historical cooking reenactment, I would judge this book to be quite valuable to anyone who wants to learn how to be a Colonial American cooking reenactor.  All you would have to add is equipment, costuming, and a location in which to cook.  

I had fun reading through the recipes.  My goal was to find one that used lemons because my neighbor had left a bag full of them on my doorstep.  There were several recipes that I considered, especially the Lemon Gingerbread on page 190, but I decided to try the Lemon Cordial on page 260.  I have made many cordials and liqueurs before but never one that had milk in it.  I wanted to see what it was like.

Lemon Cordial

Cut six fresh lemons in thin slices, put them into a quart and a half of milk, boil it until the whey is very clear, then pass it through a sieve; put to this whey, one and a half quarts of French brandy, and three pounds of powdered loaf sugar; stir it till the sugar is dissolved - let it stand to refine, and bottle it; pare some of the yellow rind of the lemons very thin, and put a little in each bottle. (Randolph).

My Notes

I decided to scale the recipe down a little.  "A quart and a half" is 6 cups, so the proportions for 2/3 of the amounts are pretty straightforward:

4 lemons (washed!)

4 cups milk

4 cups brandy

2 pounds powdered sugar

After the lemons were sliced and the milk was added, I turned the heat onto high to get the cooking going.  

I notice the curdling started right away.  This is a good thing!  It is how you get the curds and whey.

You can see the curds forming.

Once I saw some bubbles forming in the milk, I turned the heat to medium low.  

And this is where I started running into trouble.  You see, I have made curds and whey before with milk and vinegar (click here to see the post), so I expected the curds to be big and to clearly see the whey.

But that didn't happen here.  I let the mixture simmer for quite a while (a few hours!) and never saw the whey separate as I expected.  After the lemons looked very cooked, I turned the heat off and thought about what to do.

The lemons have gone limp. 

The curds were all tiny.  There was whey but everything was mixed.  I decided to pass it through a strainer lined with cheesecloth, but I was not confident this would work.

And it didn't.  Very little liquid came through; it all looked like it was still captured in the curds and lemon.

Then I decided to use some more fresh milk (1 cup) to rinse the curds off of the lemon slices, with hope I could get all that to sieve out.  I used my hands to gently squeeze the slices and to wipe the curds off of them.  This got the curds off the lemons but it still would not get the moisture out of the curds.  I had a thick, creamy liquid now.  I threw away the lemon slices.

At this point I thought that I would just have to expect a creamy, curdy cordial.  Maybe that would taste good?  So I added the powdered sugar and the brandy, mixing well.

This is a one-half gallon container

I tasted it and it was good!  But I didn't think this was supposed to be the desired result.  The container sat on the counter overnight.  The next day I saw that the curds had begun to settle -- and it was forming layers of what looked like curds in liquid at the bottom, liquid alone in the middle, and a foam on the top.  It made me think of syllabub.  I was not happy with this.

Then it occurred to me.  I should strain it through a cloth bag!  This is what I did when I made liquamen and it worked well to remove very fine particles.  Why did this take so long for me to consider?

Straining it through the bag worked really well.  The liquid was clear!

Unfiltered on the left.  Filtered on the right.

It took two days to let it all filter through.  Patience is a virtue here.  I felt confident that I was getting all the cordial through the bag.  In the end, I had just a little under 1/2 gallon of cordial.

The Verdict

The flavor was a lovely blend of lemon and brandy.  It did not strike my taste buds hard with lemon and it did not taste entirely of lemon.  It was definitely a blend.  The mouthfeel was good - enough of a syrupy texture to make me feel like I was sipping something substantial.  My guest taster and I both liked it very much and would love to have it either before or after a meal, or to go with some cheese and fruit as part of a dessert.

When I made curds and whey previously, I warmed up the milk before I added the acid for curdling.  Perhaps I should have done that here.

I should have filtered just the curds and whey through the bag before adding the sugar and brandy.  I think it would have gone faster as it wouldn't have been as thick. 

I did throw off the proportions a little by using the one extra cup of milk to rinse the lemons.  I think it curdled a little.  I doubt it affected the taste much.

I honestly don't know why the milk was important.  When I made lemon liqueur previously, I just soaked lemon peels in vodka for a few months, strained them out, and added sugar.  This worked just fine and the soaked peels were saved as zest for cooking.  

Of course this cordial took only a few days and it was ready for drinking right away.  I suspect it will improve with aging, which tends to smooth the flavors out.  I guess that the whey might add some thickness or improve the mouthfeel of the finished product.  This is all guesswork!

I call it a success.  I have enough to last a while so it will continue to age in the cupboard.  I need to add some lemon zest to it as per the recipe's recommendation.

Just so you know, "cordial" and "liqueur" are often used interchangeably.  They are both typically vodka or brandy infused with flavors, and sweetened.  Cordials are sometimes considered to be sweeter than a standard liqueur.  This was definitely sweet but not overwhelmingly so.

Rose Shrub, a Springtime Treat

I have been hard-pressed to do my blog posts for the last two months.  No, work and life in general have not been the culprits; I can only point to my loquat tree in astonishment.

A loquat, in case you didn't know, is a semi-tropical fruit that happily grows in my area and I have a decent-sized tree on my property.  It has produced fruit before but this year, it outdid itself.  I have picked over 120 pounds of fruit so far and it looks like another 20 to 40 are still on it.  I have made loquat jam, loquat chutney, spiced loquats, and loquat liqueur.  I have 12 pounds cleaned and frozen, waiting for a break in my schedule.  I've given away many pounds to friends.  Loquats are lovely to eat fresh, so I've had a lot of that.

Here is a picture of my tree and a closeup of the fruit on the tree.

One heavily laden loquat tree

Luscious, heavenly, flavorful loquats

The fruit is sweet and tastes somewhat like peaches or apricots without the tartness.  But it is different from them, which makes it a treat.  The recipes are not historic and, although they are foodie fun, most of them I got off the Internet, so I didn't want to write them up for my blog.  Now you know!

But today's recipe has to do with another springtime treat:  Roses!

The wet winter and now cool, wet spring has my yard in full bloom and among the flowers are the roses I planted a few years ago.  Two are highly scented and one of those has been producing flowers regularly.  I decided I wanted to try something with the petals.

I turned to a book I used once before, when I made a Rosemary Tea Sherbert  (part 1 and part 2).  It is Flower Cookery -- The Art of Cooking with Flowers.

By Mary MacNicol, Fleet Press Corp, published 1967

Today's recipe is on page 164.

Rose Shrub

Take one and a half pounds of fresh rose petals, add three cups of water and boil up.  Remove from heat and when cool, strain.  Then add two and half pounds of sugar, and the beaten white of an egg, boil, skim, strain and bottle.


My Redaction

I picked all the rose petals I could off of the three rose bushes.  The dark red roses aren't scented but I wanted them for color.  The other two were deeply scented. 

The recipe books all say to remove the bitter white base of the rose petals.  I tasted them and found that only the red petals had a bitter base, which I tore off.  The other bases were sweet.

A beautiful basketful, picked on a rainy day

It filled my basket to the brim and yet the total weight was barely six ounces.  I needed to scale the proportions.

Rounding up to call it 6

1 1/2 pounds petals (by weight) to 3 cups of water (by volume) is the same as

24 ounces petals to 24 ounces water, so that scales down to 6 ounces of petals to 6 ounces of water.

Similarly, 2 1/2 pounds of sugar is 40 ounces (by weight), so

24 ounces petals to 40 ounces sugar gives

3 ounces petals to 5 ounces sugar.  I had 6 ounces petals so I used 10 ounces of sugar.


That is not a lot of water but the roses took up so much volume that I chose to use my enameled cast iron Dutch oven.  I put the water in the bottom and then packed the petals in on top.

A large pot filled with roses.

I liked that the lid was heavy as I wanted to keep as much of the water and rose scent in the container as possible.  I set the heat to medium high until the water boiled -- I saw steam coming out from under the lid.  Then I turned the heat down to low, which stopped the steam, but I could still hear it simmering.

After about 25 minutes, I turned the heat off and let the whole thing cool for a few hours.  At no time during the cooking and cooling process did I lift the lid.

Once it was cold, I looked inside.

Now they are cooked down.

I decided to squeeze the petals to extract all the liquid I could from them.  I scooped them into a small colander, placed that in the pan, and squeezed with my hands until no more liquid came out. 

Squished until they could offer no more.

You can see the lovely red liquid in the bottom of the pan.

Then I strained the liquid through a fine sieve into a measuring cup and saw it was almost 8 ounces.  I still decided to use the original 6 ounces of liquid quantity to determine the sugar amount because that is what the recipe seemed to indicate.

I put the liquid into a small saucepan and then I added the sugar and the entire amount of egg white, beaten.  I suppose I could have put in a lot less white but I chose not to.  I stirred it all together and put it over medium heat.

Just starting to warm up.

It started foaming almost immediately but I waited to skim it until it had come to a boil.  As it was heating I kept turning the temperature down so it wouldn't foam over.  When I saw bubbling along the edges, I used a small ladle to skim the foam off the top.

Foam!  You can see the boiling at this point, so I started skimming.

I kept skimming through the foam even though it seemed like I was taking a lot off.  Eventually I started seeing the clear syrup peeking through the foam.

Dark islands of syrup.

So I kept skimming, trying not to take the syrup off, until the surface was pretty clear.

Nearly done.

I used a wet paper towel to wipe the sides of the pan so that when I poured the syrup out, it wouldn't pick up more foam.  Then I poured the syrup through the fine mesh sieve into a clean jar.

8 Ounces of Nectar!

After it cooled, I gave it the taste test.

The Verdict

First we tasted it just as it was, straight out of the jar.  It was definitely a sweet syrup, thick, with a lovely rose flavor.  One tester is a person who does not generally like the flavor of roses.  When she tried this, she liked it.  She felt the sugar gave the taste enough body to feel like she was drinking something, instead of just getting a strong scent of roses.  She also felt the rose flavor was an actual flavor and not just perfume.

Everyone liked it although we all agreed that it was too sweet to have more than just a sip or two.

So we tried it mixed with several other liquids.

Just adding cold water was okay but I think too much water was added; the ratio should be more like equal parts rose shrub and water but for me to say that, I will need to experiment more.

I also added equal parts tonic water, which was interesting because the tonic water is bubbly and has a bitter taste.  That shifted the whole experience away from sweet, which I liked, and the bitter added an extra dimension in flavor.  One taster, who does not like bitter, did not like the tonic water mix.

I mixed some of the shrub with a white wine, a little more wine than syrup.  That was intriguing because I no longer got the definite rose flavor but it didn't taste like wine, either.  It was a perfumed, fruity sensation that I truly liked.  One tester thought it could be described as a "rose sangria".  She does not normally like wine but felt this was a mixture she could drink, and she described it as "classy."  I liked that.

We also mixed it with white wine vinegar.  When it was about 2 parts shrub to 1 part vinegar, it was too tart for a beverage but we thought it would be a good sweet-and-sour glaze on roasted meat.  At about 3 parts syrup to 1 part vinegar, it was a refreshing, sippable beverage.  Actually, this is what I think of when I think about a beverage called shrub.

Success!

I want to make more (keeping blooming, my rose bushes!) and try it with other foods.  I think it would be good in lemonade, or drizzled over fresh loquats (or strawberries), or on pancakes, or in my hot chocolate, or mixed with vanilla yogurt as a fruit salad dressing, or brushed on the top of a cake hot from the oven (white, yellow, or lemon cake).