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CIDER CUP (another way)
Take the thin rind of a lemon and three slices of cucumber; put them into a quart of cider, and set the vessel containing it on ice. Let this stand a quarter of an hour, then remove the lemon-peel and cucumber. Add half a wine-glassful of liqueur brandy, the same quantity of curacoa, and two bottles of ginger beer. This last must be added immediately before the cup is served. Probable cost, 1s. 2d.
A summer punch built on hard cider, meant to be mixed at the last moment and drunk cold. The whole point is the short infusion: lemon peel and cucumber for fifteen minutes and no longer.
- Cider means alcoholic ciderIn a British book of this date, cider is fermented and dry, roughly 4-6% alcohol. American sweet cider will give a cloying, unbalanced cup; use a dry English-style or French cidre.
- A quart, and which quartThe imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.14 litres, not the 32 fl oz US quart. Two 500 ml bottles of cider is close enough.
- Half a wine-glassfulA Victorian wine-glass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so half is roughly 1 fl oz (30 ml) each of brandy and curaçao. This is a light hand deliberately; the spirits are seasoning, not the base.
- Liqueur brandyThe term generally indicated a good aged brandy of the sort drunk as a liqueur, rather than a cheap cooking spirit. Any decent brandy will do; the curacao supplies the sweet orange element, so no sugar is called for.
- Ginger beer, two bottlesPeriod bottles were probably somewhere between a half-pint and a pint, so perhaps 500 ml to a litre in all. Start with 500 ml, taste, and add more. A spicier, less sweet ginger beer suits the drink.
- The lemon rindThin means peel only, no white pith, taken off with a peeler. A quarter of an hour in cold cider draws the oil; the recipe is explicit that the peel comes out at that point.
- CucumberThree slices; a modern seedless cucumber is milder, so cut them thicker or use four. They are removed before the other ingredients go in and are not left to sit in the drink.
- Chilling"Set the vessel on ice" meant a bowl packed in ice, not ice in the drink. Chill the cider and ginger beer thoroughly beforehand and add ice to the jug only at the end, or the cup goes flat and watery.
- YieldAbout 1.7 to 2.2 litres finished, serving six to eight in tumblers or ten in punch cups.
Cider cup belongs to the family of Victorian "cups" -- claret cup, champagne cup, Badminton cup -- light aerated punches served at picnics, cricket matches, garden parties and at the sideboard during a ball, where something long and cold was wanted rather than a glass of wine. The formula is always the same: a wine or cider base, a small measure of spirit and liqueur, an aromatic infusion of citrus peel and often borage or cucumber, and a fizzy element poured in at the last second. Cucumber in a drink strikes modern readers as a recent affectation, but it runs right through the nineteenth-century cup recipes, alongside the cooling, faintly melon-like scent of borage. Cassell's costing of 1s. 2d. for roughly two quarts of finished drink marks it as an economical drink -- cider being a cheap country drink in England, and ginger beer cheaper still.