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CURRANT WATER (a refreshing Summer drink)
Mix a quart of red currants and a cupful of raspberries. Bruise them well; pour over them two quarts of cold water, and add half a pound of loaf sugar. Put them into a preserving-pan, and when they begin to simmer, take them off, put with them a little writing-paper soaked in water till it is reduced to a pulp, to assist the clearing, and strain the liquid through a jellybag. Add as much sugar as is agreeable to the taste, and serve in glass jugs. Time, half an hour. Probable cost of currants, 4d. to 6d. per quart. Sufficient for three quarts of water.
A simple uncooked-fruit cordial that depends on heat only to draw out juice, not to cook it. Two things need attention: the paper, which should be left out entirely, and the moment the pan comes off the stove.
- Leave out the writing-paperWriting paper of the period was commonly rag-based, and here it acts as a fining agent, the pulp apparently helping to carry haze down as it settles. Modern paper carries optical brighteners, sizing and coatings that have no place in a drink; strain twice through a jelly bag or a coffee filter instead and accept a slightly cloudier result.
- The hinge: take it off at first simmerThe instruction to remove the pan the moment bubbles appear is the point of the method. Prolonged boiling extracts more pectin and drives off the fresh top notes, tending to give a cloudier, cooked-tasting liquid rather than a clear one.
- Quart of currantsA quart of redcurrants is roughly 1 1/4 lb (about 550 g) stripped from the stalks. The cupful of raspberries is about 4 to 5 oz (120-140 g) and is there for perfume and colour rather than bulk.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was hard refined cane sugar broken from a cone, prized for purity. Ordinary granulated sugar is its direct descendant; half a pound is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (225 g).
- Liquid measuresTwo quarts of cold water is about 2.3 litres if you are working from the British imperial quart of the original, about 1.9 litres by US measure. Either works; the recipe is forgiving.
- Strain without pressingA jelly bag is hung and left alone. Squeezing forces pulp and pectin through and undoes the clarifying the recipe is trying to achieve.
- Sweeten at the endThe second addition of sugar is made to taste in the cooled liquid, where sweetness reads differently than it does warm. Dissolve it as a syrup first so it does not sit gritty at the bottom of the jug.
- Yield and keepingRoughly two and a half to three quarts, enough for eight to ten glasses over ice. There is no preservative here beyond the sugar, so refrigerate and drink within three or four days.
Fruit "waters" of this kind sit between a cordial and a lemonade, and were a standard summer offering in British households through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they have often been likened to the French eaux such as eau de groseille, though the descent of the English drink from that preparation is a plausible parallel rather than a traced lineage. Redcurrants were a garden staple rather than a market luxury in Britain, which explains the modest fourpence to sixpence a quart quoted here, and their high acidity made them a natural base for something refreshing. The soaked paper is the period detail: fining a liquid to brilliance was a point of pride, and cooks reached for whatever fibrous or albuminous material was to hand, isinglass and beaten egg white being the more usual choices.