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Fruit Punch
1 can cherries 5 qt. bottles Ginger Ale ¼ lb. Black Tea Mrs. B. H. Whitman.
This is a church-supper ingredient list rather than a set of instructions, and it has been mangled somewhere between Mrs. Whitman's card and the printer. Read it as a proportion sheet for a large tea punch and supply the method yourself.
- The "14 lb." of teaMost likely 1/4 lb. loose black tea, with the fraction bar lost in setting or scanning, though 1/8 or 1/2 lb. would read as plausibly. Fourteen pounds of tea would be absurd for five quarts of liquid; a quarter pound brewed in a quart of boiling water gives the strong, tannic base such punches relied on.
- Five quart bottlesRead as 5 quarts of ginger ale, about 20 cups. Modern equivalent: five 1-litre bottles.
- The can of cherriesPresumably canned cherries in syrup, which would contribute some sweetening. The can size is not stated and cannot be recovered; sour pie cherries will need sugar added.
- No sugar or citrus is listedPunches of this type commonly also took lemon juice and a sugar syrup, and a strong tea base benefits from both. Consider adding the juice of two or three lemons and sugar to taste before the ginger ale goes in.
- Brew, cool, then combineThe hinge of any tea punch is that the tea must be brewed and fully chilled before the ginger ale is added. Steep no longer than five minutes off the boil to keep it from turning bitter, and never pour carbonated ginger ale over anything warm.
- IceChill everything and float a single large block or a few oversized cubes rather than filling the bowl with small ice, which melts fast and waters the punch down within the hour.
- YieldRoughly 6 quarts finished, or 40 to 45 of the small punch-cup servings expected at a church reception; about 24 tumblers.
The beverage chapters of temperance-minded churches are full of tea punches, fruit shrubs and ginger ale coolers built to fill a bowl at a reception without any spirits in them. Ginger ale is the tell. Bottled and widely available in the United States from the late nineteenth century onward, it gave hostesses the fizz and bite of a wine cup at a fraction of the cost and none of the scandal. The recipe's form is just as characteristic of the genre as its contents: a name, a short list of quantities, and the contributor's married name, on the assumption that any woman using the book already knew how to brew tea and fill a punch bowl.