The Red Christmas Drink Britain Keeps Confusing

Walk into any Caribbean household in Britain in December and there will be a jug of something deep red in the fridge. Ask what it is and you will be told sorrel.

Then go to a supermarket, ask for sorrel, and you will be handed a bag of green leaves that taste of lemon and belong in a soup.

They are not the same plant. They are not even related. This is one of the great small confusions of British food, and it is worth clearing up before December.

What it actually is

The drink is made from the dried calyces of Hibiscus sabdariffa, sometimes called roselle. The calyx is the deep red, fleshy part that cups the flower, and when the flower drops it is picked, dried, and sold in bags that look like something between a spice and a potpourri.

The green stuff in the supermarket is Rumex acetosa, garden sorrel, a sharp leafy herb from cold countries. Somewhere in the history of the English language the same word landed on both, probably because both are sour, and nobody has untangled it since.

So: red drink, dried flower, sour and floral, nothing to do with the leaf.

Where it came from

Hibiscus sabdariffa is West African. It travelled to the Caribbean with enslaved people, and it went on travelling from there.

In Senegal it is bissap. In Egypt and Sudan it is karkadé. In Mexico it is agua de Jamaica, which is itself a clue about the route. In Jamaica and Trinidad it is sorrel, and it is Christmas. In Guadeloupe and Martinique we call it groseille pays, country currant, which is another name that borrowed from a plant it has nothing to do with.

One flower, five names, and on every island it turns up at the same time of year, because that is when the calyces are ready.

What goes in the jug

The base is always the same and the arguments are always about everything else.

You steep the dried calyces in just-boiled water with ginger, and almost always with clove and cinnamon and a strip of orange peel. You leave it. An hour is enough, overnight is better, two days is what the people who are serious about it will tell you. Then you strain it, sweeten it, and chill it hard.

Then the household divides. Some add rum and some do not. Some add a little pimento, which is allspice, and if you want to know why that berry belongs in a drink at all, that is its own story. Some let it ferment slightly, which gives it a fizz and an edge and is how my aunt insisted it should be.

It should be sour before it is sweet. If it tastes like squash, somebody has been heavy-handed with the sugar.

What we actually drink in Guadeloupe

I should be honest here, because this is where the French islands part company with the rest of the Caribbean.

Groseille exists on our islands and we drink it. But if you ask a Guadeloupean what is in the glass at Christmas, the answer is shrubb: rum left to sit with dried orange peel and spice for weeks until it goes dark. That is our December drink, and it is on the table at every chanté Nwèl from the end of November onwards. I have written about how that season actually runs here.

So when Britain says Caribbean Christmas drink and means sorrel, it is not wrong. It is just hearing from the islands that came here. Jamaica and Trinidad sent sorrel to Britain. Guadeloupe sent its shrubb to Paris.

Both are the same instinct: take what grows, add rum, wait.

Why a sauce maker cares about a drink

Because they are built the same way.

Sorrel is a lesson in what Caribbean cooking actually does. It takes something sharp, gives it warm spice and a little sweetness, and lets time do the rest. That is the same shape as a marinade. It is the same shape as a good hot sauce. Sour, warm, sweet, patient.

The one in my range that follows that shape most closely is Exotic Caribbean Sauce, built on passion fruit, which does for a plate what hibiscus does for a glass. If you want to see it work on a table, it is what goes on my Caribbean glazed ham at Christmas, and on mango glazed salmon the rest of the year.

If you want to make it

Buy dried sorrel, not tea bags. Caribbean grocers have it from November, and the price doubles the closer you get to the 25th, so buy it now and put it in a cupboard.

Steep it with a thumb of ginger, four cloves, a stick of cinnamon and a strip of orange peel. Sweeten at the end, not the beginning, so you can taste what you are doing. Chill it properly.

And make more than you think. It goes.

JP