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French Strawberries
Fill punch cups one-third full of very ripe red berries, sliced; add a tablespoon of granulated sugar to each cup and fill three-quarters full with strained orange juice. Stir gently to dissolve sugar and set the cups into a pan of cracked ice till served. When these simple ingredients are first put together the combination of color is really dreadful to contemplate, so give the mixture at least three hours to ripen and beautify. Valencia oranges are the most satisfactory for this use in strawberry time.
A macerated fruit cup that needs nothing but time and cold. The three-hour rest is not optional garnish advice — it is the recipe.
- Punch cupsA punch cup holds roughly 4 to 5 fl oz. Small glass tumblers, sherry glasses or espresso cups all work; the point is a portion small enough that the juice covers the fruit.
- The three hoursSugar draws juice from the berries, which then bleeds into the orange juice and unifies the color and flavor. Served immediately it tastes like two separate things in one cup. Keep it in the refrigerator rather than trying to hold cracked ice for three hours.
- Valencia orangesStill sold, and still a sound choice: a late-season juicing orange, low in bitterness and with only a few seeds. Navel juice tends to turn bitter within hours of juicing, which is roughly the window this recipe asks you to sit through. Bottled not-from-concentrate juice is a fair substitute if Valencias are gone.
- Strain the juiceStraining out pulp and membrane matters here because the liquid should stay clear enough to take on the strawberry color. A fine mesh sieve is enough.
- Sugar to tasteA tablespoon per cup is generous by current palates and assumes berries that are ripe but tart. Start with two teaspoons, taste after the first hour, and add more if needed while there is still time for it to dissolve.
- YieldRoughly a pint of sliced berries and two cups of juice fills eight punch cups. Scale by the cup rather than by weight.
- ServingBring the cups out cold with a small spoon. A few thin berry slices held back and floated on top at the last minute gives some visual definition to what is otherwise a uniform pink.
Nineteenth and early twentieth century American cookbooks used "French" loosely as a mark of refinement rather than provenance, and this is a good example: nothing about strawberries in orange juice is particularly French, but the label promised the hostess something better than plain berries and cream. The dish belongs to the brief overlap when late Valencia oranges and early strawberries are both in the market, which the recipe acknowledges directly in its last line — a seasonal instinct that is easy to lose now that both are available year round. The frank admission that the mixture looks "really dreadful" at first is characteristic of the kitchen writing of the period, which addressed readers as people who would actually be doing the work and might otherwise throw it out too soon.