Grenadine Syrup

Grenadine is my all time favorite mixer. It must have something to do with the nostalgia of drinking Shirley Temples as a child – and were those ever a treat! Especially when I was able to charm two maraschino cherries out of the server. As an adult, I’m much more apt to mix grenadine into a fruit salad or a punch bowl than I am into a cocktail or a glass of ginger ale. But I still love the stuff.

I was super excited to see that two cookbooks in a row – Canning for a New Generation and Butter & Scotch – had recipes for homemade grenadine. The canning book’s recipe started with juicing four pomegranates to yield three cups of juice. The Butter & Scotch recipe started with two cups of pure unsweetened pomegranate juice. Since it is summer time and pomegranates are out of season, I decided to attempt the Butter & Scotch recipe.

Making the Grenadine

The Butter & Scotch recipe is very straightforward: heat equal parts pomegranate juice and white sugar with whole cloves and cinnamon stick until the sugar has completely dissolved. Then let the spices infuse for about 30 minutes. After that, remove the spices and add the rest of the ingredients: orange flower water, lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, and vodka. The vodka is optional, but it is a preservative to give the grenadine a longer shelf life. Bottle it up and store it in the refrigerator. After I returned home the next afternoon, I mixed two tablespoons of my homemade grenadine with one can of diet ginger ale and two homemade brandy cherries. It was excellent! The perfect tonic after a hot day.

Having met with success with the Butter & Scotch recipe, I decided to attempt a modified version of the Fresh Pomegranate-Rosewater Grenadine recipe in Canning for a New Generation. I skipped ahead in the recipe to having measured out the pomegranate juice (which was bought bottled at the supermarket rather than fresh squeezed from four pomegranates). Again, the recipe was very straightforward, albeit a little odd. I froze the juice as directed, and then thawed it until I had the right amount of concentrate. The thawing process took forever, even in the summer time. I boiled the pomegranate concentrate with an equal amount of sugar and a piece of orange zest, and then added the rosewater off heat. I got a more than the recommended 1/8 teaspoon of rosewater into the pot because the rosewater was a little exuberant about the pour. Because it was a canning book, I followed the directions to water process can the grenadine syrup in four-ounce jars. After the jars had cooled for a few hours, I cracked one open and tried two tablespoons of the syrup in a can of diet ginger ale. It was also very refreshing, although this syrup sank almost straight to the bottom because I forgot to stir it.

Using the Grenadine

I immediately used the Butter & Scotch grenadine in the beautiful fruit salad for the Ladies Brunch last month. Using a splash of grenadine as a “sauce” for a fruit salad is something that I’ve been doing as long for as I remember making fruit salads. I also use a splash of ginger ale or champagne as a “preservative” to slow the fruit from browning or otherwise discoloring. Stir it all together and it is quite delicious.

Surprisingly, none of the cocktails in Butter & Scotch use grenadine. I did a word search of the document, and the only hits I got were either in the recipe itself or in the index. Although Canning for a New Generation offers a very limited number of cocktails using the preserved products, none were to be found using grenadine.

I still had six days left on Jerry Thomas’s Bartender’s Guide, so I thought I might find some grenadine cocktails in there. But the text of that document wasn’t searchable. I reviewed the “Syrups, Essences, Tinctures, Colorings, &c.” section, thinking I might find a grenadine recipe (which would mean that there would be grenadine cocktails), but there wasn’t one. I suppose that by 1862 pomegranates hadn’t made it into mainstream usage in the United States.

Rather than overwhelm myself with the results of a Google query for cocktails containing grenadine, I pulled Classic Cocktails by Salvatore Calabrese from my personal cookbook collection. There were ten cocktails, including the Shirley Temple, listed under Grenadine in the index. I could make three of the cocktails with the ingredients that I had on hand, and three more if I bought some orange juice. Two of the possible cocktails required either a raw egg white or a raw egg yolk, so I scratched those off the list.

I decided to make a Bacardi Classic rather than a Tequila Sunrise because the former contained more grenadine syrup. The cocktail is very simple: white rum and lime juice shaken together with grenadine syrup. Since I didn’t have the Bacardi white rum specified in the recipe, I used the Don Q white rum that I did have. I also used bottled lime juice instead of fresh lime juice. This time I used the Fresh Pomegranate-Rosewater grenadine syrup. Overall, the cocktail was a nice balance of tart and sweet, and the grenadine definitely made the cocktail work.

As I was describing my grenadine project to a good friend and her sister, they enthusiastically suggested that I try a Dirty Shirley, which is basically a Shirley Temple with some vodka in it. Curiously enough, the Shirley Temples of their childhood were always made with either 7-Up or Sprite – I don’t remember which – while the Shirley Temples of my childhood were always made with ginger ale. Since I still had vodka leftover from my limoncello project, I decided to try it after I got home from the reservoir. For a twelve-ounce can of diet ginger ale, I used two ounces of decent vodka and one ounce (two tablespoons) of grenadine. This time I used the Butter & Scotch grenadine syrup, and made sure to give the drink a good stir before tasting it. It was excellent! I couldn’t even taste the vodka.

Just out of curiosity, I did a Google search for “Rose’s Grenadine Recipes” and landed on the website for Bar None Drinks. They listed 1,016 drink recipes containing grenadine syrup in alphabetical order. It was a bit overwhelming! The Bacardi Classic and the Shirley Temple were both listed; however, the Dirty Shirley was not. Oddly enough, their Shirley Temple recipe contained ginger ale, grenadine, and orange juice.

The Verdict

In a side by side taste test, the two versions of the grenadine tasted very similar. I didn’t compare them to my bright red bottle of Rose’s Grenadine, but I’m certain that they were both far superior. I personally preferred the taste of the Canning for a New Generation recipe because that had a slightly more distinct pomegranate taste to it. The rosewater accent was absent, despite my overzealous pour. Even though both recipes used a 1:1 ratio between the pomegranate juice and the white sugar, the Butter & Scotch version seemed to be a touch thinner than the Canning for a New Generation version. That makes the Butter & Scotch version a little better for mixing into cocktails and other drinks. But, since I could hardly tell the difference between the two syrups and they were both very easy to make, I’ll be saving both recipes. Of course, I won’t be needing more grenadine for quite some time!