Chris Shepherd, chef-owner of Houston’s Underbelly restaurant, was chatting with bartenders from neighboring Anvil Bar and Refuge about a shipment of citrus from a local farm they both use when the mixologists mentioned their plans to transform the oranges into shrubs. Intrigued, Shepherd decided to give the method a whirl.
Derived from the Arabic sharab, meaning “drink,” a shrub is a zingy libation of fruit and sugar steeped in vinegar. People have enjoyed versions of these concoctions the world over—from colonial America, where sailors used them to prevent scurvy, to modern Asia, where people sip drinking vinegars as a health tonic. The shrub was one of America’s first drinks, kept without chilling and imbibed by settlers as an alternative to water, which was often unsafe. Popular through the 18th and 19th centuries, shrubs fell out of fashion after modern refrigeration eliminated the need for shelf-stable beverages.