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Frappe
Juice of 1½ dozen lemons, 6 oranges. Add 1 quart water and strain. Boil 2 pounds of sugar and 2 quarts cold water until clear. When cold add the above and one large can of pineapple diced. It can be frozen. Before serving add 2 thin sliced bananas, also cherries or grape juice. Makes three gallons or 120 glasses. 3 qts. sweet cider ½ C lemon juice Mrs. H. E. Gaddis.
A church-supper punch scaled for a crowd, built on a cooked sugar syrup rather than dissolved sugar. The name is the instruction: it is meant to be served half-frozen, as slush, not as a solid block.
- The hinge: frappé means slushThe hinge: a frappé in period usage is a semi-frozen ice, not a solid block, so "It can be frozen" need not mean frozen hard. Freeze in a shallow pan and rake it with a fork every 30-40 minutes, or churn it briefly in an ice-cream freezer, so it stays spoonable. The sugar keeps it soft; a solid block will have to be broken up and stirred back to a slurry anyway.
- Citrus quantitiesEighteen lemons give roughly 2¼ cups of juice or more depending on size; six medium oranges about 1½ cups. Fruit size varies, so measure rather than count.
- The syrupTwo pounds of sugar is about 4½ cups. "Boil until clear" means only until the sugar has fully dissolved and the liquid runs transparent — a minute or two at the boil, not a reduction. Cool it completely before adding the juice or you will cook off the fresh citrus aroma.
- One large can of pineappleA period "large can" was probably around the No. 2½ size, roughly 28-29 oz. Use about that much canned pineapple in juice, drained and diced, and add the juice to the punch as well.
- Yield does not add upThe listed liquids come to about a gallon and a half, not three. The recipe's own two figures are at least consistent with each other: three gallons over 120 glasses is about 3 oz a cup, so "glasses" means small punch cups. Added ice may account for some of the gap. Expect roughly 45-50 cups from the recipe as written, or double the water if you need the stated three gallons.
- Bananas and cherriesSlice the bananas immediately before serving, as instructed; they brown and turn slippery within the hour. The cherries were most likely maraschino, though the recipe does not say; grape juice is given as the alternative, and a cup or so is enough to tint three gallons.
- The stray last line"3 qts. sweet cider, 1½ C lemon juice" does not belong to the frappé as written; it reads as a fragment of another punch that has run on before Mrs. Gaddis's signature. Ignore it here.
- ServingA frappé punch melts fast in a warm room. Hold most of it in the freezer and refill the bowl in stages rather than putting all three gallons out at once.
Frappé — from French frapper, "to strike," and used of iced drinks — appears in American entertaining from the late nineteenth century: a citrus-and-syrup base frozen to slush and ladled into small cups. Such punches suited church receptions and socials, where something ceremonial was wanted that no one could object to. The canned pineapple and the bottled grape juice help place the recipe: both were cheap and widely advertised in the early 1900s, and Welch's grape juice in particular was marketed to churches as an unfermented communion and party drink. The large yield, counted in glasses rather than quarts, suggests it was written for a hall rather than a household.