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COOL CUP (another way) (Pare and core three large)
Pare and core three large apples, slice them, and also three large lemons, and lay them in a deep basin in alternate layers, with sugar strewn over each layer. Pour over them a bottle of claret, cover the basin, and let it stand for four hours. Strain the liquid and serve it with a lump of ice in the cup. Probable cost, 8d., exclusive of the claret. Sufficient for a pint cup.
A Victorian claret cup: fruit macerated in red wine, strained, and served cold. The whole thing rests on the four-hour steep, and on not letting the lemons turn it bitter.
- Lemons: pare, then sliceLemons: the text is ambiguous — "slice them, and also three large lemons" may mean the lemons are simply sliced, or that they are pared as well. Paring them is the safer reading for flavour: white pith left in wine for four hours turns the cup bitter, so remove what pith you can. If you want aromatic oil in the drink, add a few strips of zest and pull them out after an hour.
- ClaretIn British usage claret is red Bordeaux, or anything resembling it: dry, medium-bodied, tannic. A modern bottle is 750 ml. Use something plain and dry — the sugar and fruit are doing the sweetening, and a jammy high-alcohol red will read as syrupy.
- Sugar is unmeasured"Sugar strewn over each layer" gives no quantity. For three apples and three lemons, 3 to 4 oz (about half a cup) of caster sugar is a reasonable starting point; the lemons take a good deal of sweetening. Taste after straining and correct then, since sugar dissolves readily in the finished liquid.
- Steep coldFour hours at Victorian larder temperature is one thing; four hours in a warm modern kitchen is another. Cover and macerate in the refrigerator. The fruit acids and alcohol are not a preservative system worth relying on at room temperature.
- StrainingStrain through a fine sieve, and do not press the fruit — pressing forces apple pulp and lemon pith through and clouds the cup. Let it drip. What you want is a clear liquid rather than a cloudy one.
- "A lump of ice in the cup"This means one large piece in the serving jug or cup, not cubes. A single large lump chills with less dilution, which matters when the drink has already been diluted by fruit juice.
- Yield"Sufficient for a pint cup" is Cassell's standard yield line, though what it counts here is unclear. A bottle of claret is about 750 ml, and after the fruit has absorbed its share the strained liquid will come to rather less — enough for a few small glasses. The leftover fruit is heavily alcoholic.
- Cost noteThe 8d. is for apples, lemons and sugar only, which is why the recipe says "exclusive of the claret."
"Cool cups" fill several pages of the late-Victorian household books: claret cup, cider cup, badminton cup, cup made with hock or with cold tea, all of them a bottle of something flavoured with fruit and sugar and served iced from a jug. They belonged to summer — croquet, regattas, garden parties, the supper table at a ball — and they were the respectable way to serve alcohol in mixed company, weaker than punch, though many of the recipes in these books take brandy, sherry, curaçao or maraschino; it is this particular version that uses no spirits at all. The technique of steeping cut fruit in red wine with sugar is the same one behind Spanish sangria, and cup and sangria are generally treated as parallel developments of an old European habit rather than one borrowing from the other. What dates this version is the ice: a lump of it in the cup was still worth specifying in the 1870s, when commercial ice came from Norwegian and North American lakes and reached British households through the ice merchant.