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Claret Cup
Pour a bottle of claret into a large jug, and add two glasses of sherry, brandy, or any wine, spirit, or liquor that may be preferred, and half a glass of maraschino. Put in the thin rind of a lemon and two table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar. Let it stand for half an hour till the sugar is dissolved, then put in a sprig of borage, balm, or verbena, or a little sliced cucumber. Just before using, add a bottle of soda or seltzer water and a large piece of ice. Sliced nectarines, peaches, or raspberries may be used instead of lemon-rind.
A Victorian summer punch built in a jug rather than a bowl, and one of the few historical drinks that needs almost no translation. The details that matter are the ice, the sugar, and what "maraschino" meant in 1900.
- ClaretClaret is the British term for red Bordeaux, and in a cup it wants to be dry, light and unoaked rather than expensive. Any Cabernet Franc, Merlot or lighter Cabernet blend at moderate strength works; a heavy 15% modern red will flatten the drink.
- "Two glasses"A Victorian wine glass held roughly 2 fl oz, so this is about 4 fl oz (120 ml) of sherry or brandy, plus about 1 fl oz of maraschino. Brandy will push the finished cup noticeably stronger than sherry will.
- MaraschinoThis means the clear, dry Dalmatian cherry-stone liqueur (Luxardo and similar), not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. The two are unrelated in flavour and the syrup will make the cup cloying.
- Powdered sugarIn British usage of the period this is caster or superfine sugar, not American confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and will haze the wine. Two tablespoons is restrained; taste after the soda goes in, since dilution mutes sweetness.
- Lemon rindPare only the thin coloured zest with no white pith, and take it out once the half-hour steep is done. Left in through a long afternoon it turns the cup bitter and resinous.
- The herbsBorage is the traditional garnish and tastes faintly of cucumber, which is why sliced cucumber is offered as its stand-in; balm means lemon balm and verbena means lemon verbena. All three go in at the end and are meant to perfume, not infuse, so a single sprig is enough.
- Soda waterPeriod siphons and soda bottles varied in capacity, commonly from about 10 fl oz up to a pint; if you reckon a pint, that is 20 imperial fl oz (about 570 ml) of soda or seltzer to one bottle of wine. Add it at the last moment and stir once; repeated stirring drives off the gas the cup depends on.
- "A large piece of ice"A single block, not cubes. The point is slow dilution over an hour of pouring, and the more surface area you give the ice the faster the cup goes watery. A litre of water frozen in a loaf tin or plastic tub does the job.
- YieldA bottle of claret with the spirits and a bottle of soda gives roughly 45 to 50 fl oz of finished cup, or ten or so small glasses. It does not keep past the afternoon it is made.
"Cups" were the Victorian answer to the older punch bowl: wine, a fortifying spirit, a whisper of liqueur, aromatic herb and fruit, and then aerated water, all assembled in a jug and carried out to the lawn. Claret cup, cider cup, Moselle cup and the Badminton cup that fill the same pages of period cookery books belong to the era of cricket matches, regattas and lawn tennis parties, and they depended on two nineteenth-century developments: cheap commercial soda water dispensed from a glass siphon, and the imported block ice that the American and Norwegian ice trades put within reach of ordinary households. Borage is the signature garnish of the whole family and survives today mainly in Pimm's; its cucumber note is the reason the recipe offers sliced cucumber as a substitute in the same breath. The closing sentence shows the cup was treated as a formula to be varied rather than a fixed drink.