Cherry Punch
Boil two cups sugar and one cup water until a rich syrup is formed. Add one cup of lemon juice and two cups of Cherry juice, left over when canning cherries. (This left-over juice may be brought to the boiling point, skimmed and turned into sterilized fruit jars, sealed and stored as canned fruit and may be used for punch or pudding sauce.) Add two cups cold water. Fill a claret pitcher with cracked ice; add mixture. When serving, place a thin slice of orange, three or four strawberries and three pitted California cherries in each glass, fill three-fourths full with mixture. Serve very cold.
A temperance punch built on the syrup left in the kettle after a day of putting up cherries. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions assume a very tart lemon and a very sweet cherry syrup, so taste before you commit the ice.
- The syrupTwo cups sugar to one cup water, boiled until "a rich syrup is formed," means simmering only until the sugar is fully dissolved and the liquid has thickened slightly — a minute or two at a bare boil. The book names no temperature; boiled much further it will thicken heavily and may crystallise as it cools.
- If you have no canning liquidTwo cups of cherry juice can be had by simmering about 1 1/2 lb pitted sweet cherries with a splash of water until they collapse, then straining through a jelly bag without pressing. Bottled tart cherry juice works but is sharper; cut the lemon juice to about 2/3 cup.
- BalanceOne cup of lemon juice is roughly five or six lemons and makes a distinctly acid punch by current taste. Mix the syrup, juices and cold water first, taste, and add water or syrup before the ice goes in.
- The canning asideThe parenthetical describes open-kettle canning — filling hot jars and sealing with no processing time. That method is no longer considered sound even for high-acid fruit juice. Refrigerate the juice for a few days or freeze it, or follow a current tested canning procedure.
- Claret pitcherA tall narrow glass jug. Any large pitcher does; the shape matters only in that cracked ice packs into it without floating the fruit to the top.
- IceCracked ice, not cubes — smaller pieces chill fast but also dilute fast. If you are making the punch ahead, chill the mixture in the refrigerator and add ice only at serving.
- California cherriesSimply sweet cherries; Bing or Rainier. Pit them and add at the last moment, as they bleed into the glass.
- YieldGetting on for two quarts of liquid before ice, enough to fill a dozen or so punch glasses three-quarters full as directed.
52 Sunday Dinners (Elizabeth O. Hiller, 1913) was organized as a year of menus, and this punch belongs to the early-summer end of that year, when cherries came in and when the household was canning them. Its real subject is thrift: the syrup drained off a batch of canned cherries was too good to pour away, and cookbooks of the period often found a second use for it in punches, puddings sauces and sherbets. The "claret pitcher" is a leftover of an earlier drinking habit pressed into non-alcoholic service — American fruit punches of the 1900s and 1910s were increasingly served without wine or spirits, and a Sunday dinner punch was expected to suit the whole table. The specification of "California cherries" may be a small piece of period evidence in itself: refrigerated rail cars are generally credited with making Pacific coast fruit an ordinary thing to name in a Chicago recipe.