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Pomegranate Water
Carefully take out the deep-coloured pips from three ripe pomegranates, and bruise them well with the back of a wooden spoon. Mix with them six ounces of roughly-powdered sugar, the strained juice of a lemon, three-quarters of a pint of water, two or three drops of cochineal, and half a dozen drops of the essence of elder flowers if it is at hand; if not, it may be dispensed with. Filter the liquid until it is clear, and it is ready for serving. Time, about twenty minutes to prepare. Probable cost, best pomegranates, 4d. to 1s. each. Sufficient for a pint and a quarter of pomegranate water.
A Victorian summer eau — a cold, filtered fruit drink meant to be poured clear rather than pulpy. Almost everything in it translates directly; the measurements are imperial and the colouring is optional.
- Bruise, don't grindThe "pips" are the arils — the juice sacs, each with a hard seed inside. Press them just enough to burst the sacs. Crushing the seeds themselves releases bitter tannin that no amount of filtering will remove.
- Imperial measuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, about 1¾ US cups. The stated yield of a pint and a quarter is 25 fl oz, roughly 3 US cups — two generous glasses with ice, or four small ones.
- Six ounces of sugarThat is a weight, not a volume: 6 oz is about 170 g, close to a cup of granulated. It is a sweet drink by design, closer to a cordial than a juice. Dissolve it in the water before adding the fruit if you want to avoid grit in the filter.
- CochinealCarmine, made from the dried insect Dactylopius coccus. Still legal and still used commercially, but it is animal-derived and a known allergen for a few people. Ripe pomegranates need no help with colour; leave it out.
- Essence of elder flowersA Victorian flavouring essence, closest modern equivalent being elderflower cordial or a drop of elderflower extract. Six drops of essence is not six drops of cordial — if using cordial, allow a teaspoon or two and cut the sugar accordingly.
- FilteringPour through damp muslin or a paper coffee filter and let it drip. Squeezing or pressing the cloth forces fine pulp through and the drink turns cloudy, which defeats the point of the recipe.
- Three pomegranatesModern supermarket fruit runs 8-12 oz each and yields roughly ¾ cup of arils apiece. The old prices quoted in the recipe — fourpence to a shilling each — mark this as an expensive ingredient.
- ServingChill thoroughly and serve within a day; there is no preservative here beyond sugar and lemon, and the fresh flavour flattens quickly.
Fruit "waters" fill a long stretch of Victorian cookery books: lemon water, orange water, currant water, all of them descendants of the Arabic and Persian sharbat, a sweetened fruit syrup let down with cold water, which reached western Europe by way of Ottoman and Italian intermediaries and gave English both sherbet and sorbet. Pomegranate belongs squarely in that lineage — the French grenade gives us grenadine, originally a pomegranate syrup rather than the red sugar-water it usually is now. Cassell's places the recipe among its beverages; the instruction to filter until clear shows that clarity was the point, and the cochineal and the elderflower essence are both optional touches to the eye and nose of a drink that was, at fourpence to a shilling a fruit, not cheap.