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Hallowe'en Punch
3 qts. sweet cider. 1/2 C lemon juice. 1 qt. ginger ale Sugar to taste Mix together cider and lemon juice add sugar to sweeten. Pour into bowl over block of ice. Just before serving add ginger ale. Makes about one gallon.
The ingredient list has been mangled somewhere between the church basement and the printer: only the ginger ale carries a quantity, though the method calls for cider and lemon juice. The yield is the one solid clue to work from.
- The missing quantitiesWith 1 quart of ginger ale in a gallon of finished punch, the remaining three quarts are cider plus lemon juice. Something on the order of 2¾ quarts of sweet cider and the juice of 3 to 4 lemons (roughly ½ to ¾ cup) would fill that out; the original numbers are simply not recoverable from the page.
- Cider means sweet ciderIn an American church cookbook, cider is unfermented apple cider, not the alcoholic drink the word denotes in Britain. Unfiltered cloudy cider is closer to what was meant than clear apple juice, which will taste thin.
- Sugar to tasteSweet cider already carries a good deal of sugar, and the ginger ale more. Sweeten after the lemon juice goes in and taste again once the ale is added, or the punch turns cloying.
- Dissolve the sugar firstGranulated sugar will sit on the bottom of a cold bowl. Stir it into a cup of the cider at room temperature until it is gone, then combine, or make a simple syrup.
- The block of iceA single large block, frozen in a loaf pan or bowl, melts far more slowly than cubes and keeps the punch from diluting over an evening. Ice rings and moulds were standard punch-bowl equipment in the period.
- Ginger ale last, and coldThis is the hinge of the recipe and the original says so. Chill the ginger ale thoroughly and add it at the table; poured in early or warm, it goes flat and the punch is merely sweet cider.
- YieldOne gallon fills about 25 to 30 punch cups of four to five ounces.
Church and club cookbooks compiled by women's societies in the early twentieth century commonly carry a punch section, and such punches are usually alcohol-free: sweet cider, ginger ale, fruit juice and sugar over ice, scaled to the gallon because it was meant for a hall rather than a household. Many of the congregations that produced these books sat close to the temperance movement, and a "punch" in a book like this one inherits the bowl, the block of ice and the ladle from eighteenth-century spirit punches while deliberately leaving out the spirits. The Hallowe'en label points to the same period's enthusiasm for the holiday as an occasion for parlour parties and church socials rather than a children's door-to-door affair; cider was the seasonal drink because the pressing came in autumn.