My Lilac and Pineapple Shrub
Mixed drinks enthusiasts, zero-proof and otherwise, will no doubt be familiar with drinking shrubs. This acidulated cordial gets a springtime facelift with the fragrance of lilacs.
I was working at a rare tea shop in 2012 when I was first introduced to bitters. I was deep in my cordial-making phase, which meant lots of mocktails in our household, and in the tea shop wherein I worked full-time. There, I was granted the freedom to put my own tea-based mocktail creations to the specialty drinks menu. I used dashes of bitters in my tea-based mocktails for that added je ne sais quois; I felt like a mad scientist, really, for the zero-proof crowd. This was during a time when artisanal bitters were only just starting to make its way outside of prestigious bars and into households like mine.
The purveyors of these Vancouver-crafted bitters were an ex-Vancouver-based couple well-known in the local culinary industry during that time. They started selling their signature bitters in specialty food stores like the tea shop wherein I was employed. We befriended one another; I traded my budding food photography services for some clout in the local food industry, free bitters, and gourmet meals. They helped to cement my reputation in Vancouver back when most budding food photographers worked with only natural light. For them, I stood out because I knew how to style a shot and work with artificial light. And though we have long since drifted apart, I have to credit their influence during that highly formative time in my life. The lessons I learned during my time with them have shaped my own culinary journey.
One day, over a Facebook status update, they asked their networks if any of them had access to a lilac bush from which they can harvest flowers, presumably for a food and cocktail event they were organizing. They said they would trade some of their bitters for some lilac blooms as an incentive. This Facebook status update piqued my interest; I scanned through comments and saw that they were going to use these lilac blooms for a culinary experiment. And so there, on that casual Facebook status update, is where I first discovered lilacs were edible.
I was so intrigued, that I found myself doing a deep dive over the internet immediately after that Facebook note. The common lilac—Syringa vulgaris—belongs to the Oleaceae family, of which the olive is also a member. This blew my mind, of course. During one of my weekly trips to the farmers’ market, circa summer of 2013, I saw a bouquet of lilacs selling for five dollars in one of the stalls, so I bought a bouquet, picked off a bloom, chewed on it, and was immediately overcome with its perfume in my mouth. This was followed by a slight astringency and pepperiness that reminds me of drinking a high-quality olive oil, and has a gentle, verdant finish, like nettles, or even spinach. Its natural perfume, however, opened up my imagination, but it would be years until I would begin to experiment with lilac blooms in my own cooking.
There is some debate as to what types of lilac are edible. One blog I came across during my deep dives says to only harvest from the Syringa vulgaris plant, but another blog says that Persian lilacs (Syringa persica), alongside the common lilac, are also safe to consume. For safety, I would stick with the Syringa vulgaris variety. I don’t willy-nilly forage these, admittedly. I buy mine from a reputable, organic farmer at the farmers’ market here in Vancouver. Whenever I see lilacs at their stall, I know I have only two, maybe three weekends to buy them from when they first start to appear, so I tend to overbuy bunches in my attempt to squirrel away a taste of spring for those dreary winter days.
If you haven’t worked with lilacs before, let me tell you… they are A LOT of work. Recently, I bought roughly 20 stems with very full blooms, and I am on my third day of processing these flowers. I still have about half of these stems left in my fridge. I am growing so very weary of processing them that I have about half a mind to just enjoy the blooms for what they are, but the gourmand in me wants to milk these blooms for their flavour, knowing full-well how fleeting they are. It remains to be seen if I survive 2024’s descent into lilac bloom processing purgatory. At least this particular stage of purgatory smells good, something Dante failed to mention in his Divine Comedy… BA-DUM-TSSS!!!
When processing lilacs, it is important you take only the bloom and not any of its green stem, but it is also important to preserve as much of the blooms’ stamens and pistils as possible, because this is where its nectar lies. So… considering that there are lots of tiny, little blooms in a stem, you can imagine how incredibly labour-intensive it is to process these blooms. My limit is about two hours per day, sometimes three, but really… proceed with your sanity fully-primed. I should limit myself to buying only one bunch a year, but somehow my greed gets the better of me and I buy three, thinking, “Surely, this is the year I can process these in one day!” I even approach the stall with the kind of delirious confidence that can only stem from someone afflicted with my particular, food-obsessed derangement. And, of course, like every year since 2019, I end up the fool with a fridge filled with lilac blooms and a husband who has to navigate the fridge for our leftovers inside chaotically-arranged containers Tetris’d amongst full heads of lilacs. Sometimes, I wish I had a commercial-grade kitchen, with huge walk-in fridges and freezers for all the kinds of cooking I do, but for that to happen, I would essentially have to be Beyoncé, so I make do with what I have, and creatively cram every available space in my fridge with lilacs when the season starts.
When I first started working with lilacs—around the summer of 2019—I had wanted to make a simple lilac syrup at first, so that’s what I did. So when I made a soda with said lilac syrup, I was surprised at how much it reminded me of a ripe pineapple! Its fragrance, for one, is reminiscent of a pineapple, at least, for me. And so I thought, “Hey, why not make a syrup out of pineapple and lilacs?”
The decision to make my lilac concoction a drinking shrub came naturally after deciding I would much rather have a shrub than just a simple, infused syrup. I wanted to highlight the brightness of a ripe pineapple, and a shrub does that perfectly! Et voila, our household’s perennial spring drink was born!
For those not familiar with drinking shrubs, think of them like flavoured sugar syrups acidulated with vinegar. In fact, they are also referred to as drinking vinegars, and are typically infused with fresh fruit, herbs of one’s choosing, and sugar. Sodas flavoured with shrubs offer a more complex flavour profile and a lower sugar alternative to sodas flavoured with infused simple syrup. Its etymology stems from the Arabic word sharab, a word that pertains to beverages, drinkables, and syrups used to flavour drinks.
I have scoured the internet for this flavour combination—that of lilacs and pineapple—mostly out of curiosity to see if anyone else has come up with this. I am pretty sure I am this flavour combo’s inventor! In a world where everything has been done many times over and in many different ways, how is this even possible? Admittedly, I guarded this shrub’s flavour for about half a decade now, in hopes I would have a cookbook by the time this recipe makes it out there… but life is too short not to put this out there to share. Just know that you saw it here first, ok? ;-)