Fruit Cup
Five tablespoons of Larkin Ceylon Tea infused in a quart of boiling water. Let stand for five minutes and then pour over two pounds of granulated sugar. Cook this into a thick syrup. Cool and add to the strained juice of six lemons, six oranges, one pineapple, one quart of berries. The fruit may be varied according to the season. Add one teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla and one teaspoon of Larkin Almond Flavoring Extract. When ready to serve, add a quart of any good mineral water or a quart of iced water, and serve cold. This formula will make a gallon of liquid, and the quantity may be increased or diminished according to one's need.
A tea-based punch built on a heavy sugar syrup, meant to be diluted at the last minute. The base keeps for days, so the work can be done well ahead.
- The hinge: don't overbrewFive tablespoons of leaf in a quart of water is a deliberately strong infusion, which is why the five minutes matters. Strain the leaves out at once; left in, the tannin turns the finished cup harsh and drying, and no amount of sugar hides it.
- "Cook this into a thick syrup"Two pounds of sugar to a quart of tea is roughly equal parts by weight, so it dissolves readily and then needs boiling down to thicken. Do not push it toward caramel or the hard-ball range; you want it pourable when cold.
- SweetnessTwo pounds is roughly 4 1/2 cups of sugar for a gallon of finished drink. That is Edwardian punch sweetness. Halving it still gives a sweet cup and lets the citrus read more clearly.
- Fruit quantitiesSix lemons give about 1 cup of juice, six oranges about 2 cups, a ripe pineapple 1 to 1 1/2 cups once crushed and strained. A quart of berries yields perhaps 1 1/2 cups of juice if mashed and pressed through a sieve; strain it or the cup will be cloudy and full of seeds.
- Larkin productsThe brand names are the mail-order house whose book this is. Any black Ceylon tea, pure vanilla extract and almond extract will do. Modern almond extract is potent -- a teaspoon in a gallon is right, but measure rather than pour.
- Mineral waterIn this period bottled mineral water was commonly sparkling, though still waters were sold under the same name; the recipe treats plain iced water as an equal alternative. If you use seltzer or club soda, add it at the table, not in advance, or the fizz is gone before the first glass.
- Yield and serviceA gallon is about twenty 6-ounce cups from a punch bowl. Chill the base thoroughly first; a block of ice or a frozen ring melts slowly and keeps it from watering down, which loose cubes will do.
A "cup" in this period was a specific thing: a chilled, diluted, fruit-and-sugar beverage served from a bowl for a crowd, the temperance cousin of claret cup and champagne cup, both of which appear in the same era's household books with wine in place of the tea. Strong tea was a standard punch base in American recipes from the late nineteenth century onward, valued for the same reason vintners value tannin -- it gives sweet fruit juice some backbone. The branded ingredients here are worth noticing: this is a book that names a particular company's tea, vanilla and almond flavoring in a single short formula, which tells you it was written to move products through a mail-order catalog as much as to instruct a cook. The instruction that the fruit "may be varied according to the season" is the honest part, and the reason the recipe still works: before year-round shipping, a punch was assembled from whatever was ripe that week.