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Is there room for a shrub in the garden? There is when it's this kind of shrub. Shrubs are an 18th-century English invention involving the slow maceration of fruit with sugar in alcohol. In the days before cocktails, shrub was a good way to make poor-quality rum or brandy more interesting and old recipes talk of gallons and quarts and oak barrels and letting the finished product mature for at least a week but sometimes as long as two months. After much experimentation, I can report that a good shrub can be made without a great deal of fuss. The trick is in removing the zest (the coloured part of the rind) from the fruit without adding the bitter white pith.