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Fruit Beverage
Peel twelve lemons very thin, squeeze the juice over the peel and let stand two hours, then add one pound of sugar.
Mash one quart of ripe raspberries with half a pound of sugar; pare a ripe pineapple, shred the fruit fine and mix with another half pound of sugar, then strain the lemon juice and mash the raspberries through a coarse sieve, then the pineapple, and mix all together, adding three quarts of cold water. Stir until the sugar is entirely dissolved, then strain, and serve with a little of the fruit in each glass.
A large-format summer punch built on the old bartender's trick of steeping citrus peel in its own juice and sugar. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions assume a party.
- Peel thin, and mean itThe whole character of the drink comes from the lemon oil in the zest, so take only the yellow with a peeler or zester. Any white pith carried along turns the finished punch bitter over the two-hour steep.
- What the steeping doesJuice and peel left together draw the oil out of the skin into a fragrant liquid; in this recipe the sugar goes in only after the two hours. Bartenders make a related preparation of citrus oil and sugar called oleo-saccharum. Do not shorten the two hours, and keep it covered so the aromatics stay put.
- Sugar totalsOne pound with the lemons, half a pound with the raspberries and half a pound with the pineapple comes to two pounds, or roughly 4 1/2 cups. Against three quarts of water this is decidedly sweet by current taste; a pound to a pound and a half gives a drink most people now prefer, and you can always stir more in.
- A quart of raspberriesMeasured as a dry quart, that is four generous cups, somewhere between 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 lb. Frozen raspberries, thawed, work and give more juice.
- PineappleOne ripe pineapple yields roughly 4 cups of shredded flesh. Cut out the fibrous core before shredding; it will not pass the sieve and only clogs it.
- Pushing it throughA coarse sieve and the back of a ladle is still the right tool. Do not use a blender on the raspberries, which pulverises the seeds and leaves a gritty, bitter edge, and do not press so hard on the pineapple that you force pulp through, or the punch goes cloudy.
- Reserve fruit before strainingThe final instruction asks for a little fruit in each glass, so set aside a handful of whole raspberries and some finely diced pineapple before you begin sieving.
- Yield and serviceSomething over a gallon once the juice, fruit and dissolved sugar are counted; in small punch cups that is a good many servings. Chill the mixture thoroughly rather than adding ice to the bowl, or serve over ice in the glass; a block of ice in the bowl melts more slowly than cubes if you are holding it out for an afternoon.
Fruit punches of this kind filled a specific social need in American households: something to hand round at a reception, a lawn party or a church social that was cold, pretty and emphatically not alcoholic. Printed collections of the period are full of them, and they sit alongside the temperance movement's push for respectable alternatives to the punch bowl. The technique of steeping citrus peel in juice and sugar is much older, inherited from eighteenth-century punch-making, where rum and arrack were simply added at the end. The pineapple is the telling ingredient: steamers from the Caribbean and fruit from Florida had brought fresh pineapple within reach of ordinary northern kitchens in summer, and cookbooks show it off wherever they can.