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Beverages: Squeeze
Cut the rind of 1 lemon thin, then into small strips. Squeeze juice of lemon in each glass; add 1 teaspoon- MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK ful sugar; stir until dissolved; fill half up with shaved ice; pour in half ginger pop and half grape juice; place 3 sprigs of mint and 2 pieces of peel in each glass and serve with straws.
Red-Currant Punch.
Boil for five minutes 1 cupful sugar and 3 quarts water. Remove from the fire, and, while the sirup is still hot, dissolve in it 1 pint red-currant jelly. Add 3 lemons and 3 oranges, sliced thin. Set on ice until chilled and serve in glasses partly filled with crushed ice.
Two separate drinks run together on the page, the first interrupted by the book's running head. Both are built by the glass or the pitcher with no fixed yield given, so treat the proportions as ratios rather than fixed quantities.
- The intruding line"MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK" is the page header from the source book, printed mid-sentence by the scanner. Read the instruction as "add 1 teaspoonful sugar."
- Ginger popPeriod ginger pop was a lightly fermented or carbonated ginger drink; strength and sweetness varied by maker. Ginger ale is the closest ready substitute; ginger beer gives more bite.
- Grape juiceIn American use of this period, bottled grape juice generally meant unfermented Concord juice, pasteurized and sold sweet and dark purple. Use unsweetened Concord and cut the added sugar if it tastes cloying.
- Shaved iceShaved or crushed ice was chipped from a block and packed the glass loosely. A blender pulse or a canvas bag and mallet gets closer to the texture than cubes, which leave too much liquid volume.
- The lemon peelCut the rind thin means zest only, no white pith, which turns bitter in a sweet drink. The recipe specifies two pieces of peel and three sprigs of mint per glass, served with straws.
- Red-currant punch proportionsOne cup sugar to three quarts water is a very thin syrup; the pint of jelly carries most of the sweetness and all of the body. Stir the jelly in while the water is genuinely hot or it will stay in lumps.
- Currant jellyA pint of jelly is about 2 cups; check the jar, as commercial sizes vary. Modern jelly may be firmly set, so whisk steadily to break it down into the hot syrup.
- Citrus slicesSliced fruit left standing in the punch can pick up bitterness from the pith. If it sits long, lift the slices out once the punch is chilled and float fresh ones for serving.
- YieldThe currant punch makes a little over three quarts, enough for roughly sixteen or more punch-cup servings depending on cup size. The squeeze is assembled one glass at a time.
Both recipes here belong to the temperance side of the punch tradition: grape juice and currant jelly stand in place of the wine and spirits of a nineteenth-century punch bowl, and bottled unfermented grape juice was marketed to exactly that audience from the 1890s. Household manuals and cookbooks of the period tended to gather such drinks under "Beverages" alongside lemonades, ginger beers and invalid cordials, chilled non-alcoholic punches being a common offering where liquor was not served.