Mint Julep
1 quart water 1 cup orange juice 2 cups sugar Juice 8 lemons 1 pint claret wine 1 1/2 cups boiling water 1 cup strawberry juice 12 springs fresh mint Make syrup by boiling quart of water and sugar twenty minutes. Separate mint in pieces, add to the boiling water, cover, and let stand in warm place five minutes, strain, and add to syrup; add fruit juices, and cool. Pour into punch-bowl, add claret, and chill with a large piece of ice; dilute with water. Garnish with fresh mint leaves and whole strawberries.
Despite the name, this is a claret punch for a bowl, not the bourbon-over-crushed-ice drink of the same name. It is worth reading the ingredient list twice, since the water appears in two separate places for two separate purposes.
- Two waters, two jobsThe quart of water boils with the sugar into syrup; the 1 1/2 cups of boiling water is poured over the mint as an infusion. Keep them separate or the mint flavour will be boiled away.
- Don't boil the mintThe mint goes into water already off the heat, covered, for five minutes only. Longer steeping or actual boiling draws out bitter, hay-like notes from the leaves.
- Syrup timingTwenty minutes of boiling reduces the quart of water and gives a moderately thick syrup. Watch it toward the end; if it begins to thread off the spoon it has gone further than a punch needs.
- Strawberry juiceCrush about 1 1/2 pints of ripe hulled strawberries with a little sugar, let them sit half an hour, then press through a sieve or jelly bag to yield the cup called for. Bottled strawberry syrup is much sweeter and would need the sugar cut back.
- LemonsEight lemons of the period give roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups of juice. Measure rather than count, since lemons vary widely in size.
- ClaretClaret here means dry red Bordeaux or any dry, medium-bodied red. Add it after the mixture has cooled so the alcohol and aroma are not driven off.
- Ice and dilutionOne large block of ice chills without watering the punch down as fast as cubes do. The final "dilute with water" is to taste; start with a pint and judge the sweetness, as the syrup is deliberately concentrated.
- YieldRoughly two and a half to three quarts before dilution, or about twenty punch-cup servings.