Home › The Principles of Cookery › Hock Cup
Hock Cup
Put a quarter of a pound of crushed ice into a punch bowl, with a few cut slices of lemon, the juice of two lemons, a liqueur glass of Chartreuse, the same of Curacoa, and two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Mix thoroughly, and then add a quart bottle of hock and two bottles of soda water. Stir it, let it stand for a minute or two, and then serve.
A Victorian summer "cup" — wine lengthened with soda and sharpened with citrus and liqueur. The proportions need translating before it works with modern bottles.
- HockHock is the English name for white wine from the Rhine, historically Hochheim and its neighbours. A dry to off-dry German Riesling is the closest thing on a current shelf; avoid anything heavily oaked or sweet, since the recipe already adds sugar and two liqueurs.
- Liqueur glassA liqueur glass of the period held roughly 1 fl oz. So about 1 oz Chartreuse and 1 oz curaçao — "Curacoa" is simply the older spelling. Green Chartreuse is assertive; yellow gives a gentler cup.
- Bottle sizesA "quart bottle" of wine in this period usually meant the trade's "reputed quart" of about 26 fl oz rather than a full imperial quart of 40 fl oz, which puts it close to a single modern 750 ml bottle. "Two bottles of soda water" most likely means the small bottles sold then, perhaps 6-7 fl oz each, rather than two large modern bottles.
- SugarTwo tablespoons of granulated sugar will not dissolve readily in an iced bowl. Dissolve it in the lemon juice first, or substitute an equal volume of simple syrup, and taste before adding all of it.
- The iceA quarter pound of crushed ice is roughly a cup, a small quantity that chills without watering the cup down. Chill the wine and soda beforehand; note that the recipe puts the ice into the bowl first, before the lemon, liqueurs and sugar.
- TimingThe recipe's rest of "a minute or two" comes after the wine and soda have gone in. Since soda goes flat quickly, stir and serve promptly.
- YieldRoughly 45 to 60 fl oz depending on how the quart bottle is read, or six to eight cup glasses. Traditional garnishes for a wine cup are borage flowers, a strip of cucumber peel or a sprig of mint floated on top.
"Cups" -- wine diluted with aerated water, iced, and flavoured with citrus and a spirit or liqueur -- were a common warm-weather drink in English middle-class households from the mid-nineteenth century, served at picnics, regattas and garden parties where a bowl could be mixed for a crowd. Claret cup, cider cup and champagne cup appear alongside this one. "Hock" as an English name for Rhine wine is generally traced to the town of Hochheim am Main, clipped and anglicised. Chartreuse and curacao were both available in Britain by the later nineteenth century, and a dash of a liqueur was a common way to give a light wine some perfume. The small bottled soda waters called for here reflect a household that bought aerated water by the split or drew it from a siphon.